How to Spot a Scammer?

How to Avoid Being Scammed Online 

How Scammers Work 

If you were sat on your sofa one evening, and someone knocked on your door to tell you your bank account had been hacked, what would you think? 

What about if they said the best way to keep your money safe was by going to a cash machine and withdrawing your money, so they could hold onto it and keep it safe for you? 

Would you believe them if they showed you an ID that says they are the manager of your local bank branch? 

In any of these circumstances, I imagine alarm bells would definitely be ringing in your head, and for good reason too, because it sounds ridiculous!

Modern day scam artists know that people won’t fall for such an obvious scam in person, but unfortunately it isn’t uncommon for people to be swindled by these thieves pretending to be someone with authority, such as a police officer or a bank manager.

These scammers have been getting more and more crafty in recent years. Whether it’s a smooth-talker on the phone, or an alarming email wrapped in official-looking packaging, the approaches these villains use are extremely sophisticated and on first glance may appear completely genuine.

How to Spot a Scammer

But you can stop these scammers in their tracks before they get going, if you know that a trusted organisation, especially those regulated by the FCA (such as ourselves), will NEVER ask you for your PIN number or full password for any online accounts. Nor would your bank suggest that you should move funds to a “safe account”, or send you a link to a specific login page, or ask you for remote PC access following a cold call, email or text message.

If you are in doubt, the best course of action is to contact your bank by their official phone number, which can usually be found on the back of your bank card or on a statement. You can also call Stop Scams UK on 159 to double check before giving away any information.

Scammers will typically latch onto something topical, currently the cost-of-living crisis is a common opener, they could be pretending to be from the DWP, your bank or even your energy provider! They will usually add a sense of urgency by warning people that they could miss out on whatever financial help they are pretending to offer, remember that there is some genuine help available for people struggling currently, but if it comes from a cold caller then it is almost guaranteed to be a crook. The same goes for cold calls from the tax office, which has recently become more common, pressuring you to pay an outstanding tax bill – the Inland Revenue will never call you to ask for an immediate payment.

Cambrian’s Top Tips on Avoiding Scams

• Avoid clicking links on texts or emails, even if they look genuine, instead, go to your browser and type in the web address of the company the scammer is claiming to be. One common instance of this is Royal Mail Tracking scam texts, if you type in the address on Google, you will realise that the tracking link that they text you doesn’t even look close to the real one.

• Never reply to unknown numbers that text you out of the blue, a common scam used currently is the ‘Hi Mum’ scam, in which criminals imitate a family member using a new phone number in an emergency to ask for money. To avoid this, we recommend never replying to an unknown number that messages you out of the blue, and instead call family back on a known number, and NEVER send money unless you are 100% sure it is going to the right person!

• One common way to be caught out is receiving a dodgy text or email asking you to log in to your bank account, if you click the link, most of the time you will be taken to a fake banking page that asks you for your personal details such as account and PIN numbers. If you fell for this, you would effectively be handing over your entire bank account to the scammer, for this reason, we recommend as above; go through an official search engine, and find the login page for your bank, you will then see that the official web address and the scam address are never close to being alike.
• Finally, ALWAYS keep your guard up! Scammers are evolving every day; it is important those of you who know how to spot a scam remind those (such as older people) who may struggle to spot the warning signs