6 tips for avoiding online scams amid COVID-19
Being mindful, being aware and noting odd happenings in our digital lives can help stop these fraudulent maneuvers.
Every day, as consumers and as business people, we are confronted with obvious and often not-so-obvious attempts to steal our information, our identity and our money. Scammers have been particularly busy in recent weeks as businesses and individuals shift their activities online in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.
We are not powerless against these criminals. Being mindful, being aware and noting odd happenings in our digital lives can help stop these fraudulent maneuvers.
Here are six tips for staying safe.
1) Online purchases should be made with PayPal or with a credit card. The reason is that debit cards take the money immediately. If fraud is in progress, the delay of a credit card transaction affords the card holder a better opportunity to catch the fraud and get it corrected.
2) If it looks odd, it likely is. Sometimes, something doesn’t look or feel right. While many shoppers stick to large, legitimate shopping sites like Amazon or Barnes & Noble, shoppers also seek deals. Unfamiliar web sites or mom-and-pop sites have become adept at mimicking their supersized competitors.
See an odd “o” in Amazon that looks like a zero? Don’t buy from it. Does the eBay purchase you’re about to make have a legitimate looking url? Double check it. Make sure it’s not a fake or altered web site; pop around online and be sure the purchase comes from the authentic retailer.
3) Go slowly when responding to or clicking through eNewsletters. A sophisticated and effective way scammers can get buyers’ money is by building authentic looking eNewsletters that provide click-thrus for purchasing or for personal information confirmation. One real-life scenario involved a well-known university credit union that sends out eNewsletters regularly.
One day, the eNewsletter showed up in members’ inboxes. The eNewsletter asked the recipient to confirm their name, social security number, address and phone. When the recipient complied and clicked, “done,” all that information went to a database controlled by scammers. The bogus eNews was so well designed, it was virtually impossible to know it was fake.
4) Create new passwords and do it often. Create different passwords for different web sites and make a habit of changing them regularly. Make the passwords sophisticated. If eight or more characters are required for the password, you might consider taking the extra time to make a 16-character password that makes use of supported combinations and special characters (i.e, #,S,<, numbers and letters). There are apps that help keep passwords organized and stored. Use one.
5) Enable fraud protection. The good news is that when fraud is detected, reputable companies help make it right. The credit union fraud caused the card owner to incur over $500 in unauthorized charges. The card holder had all the money put back into her account. Enable fraud protection on all credit cards. Most banks that hold credit cards will work with the cardholder to identify the fraud and reimburse the charges. Fraud protection makes the correction easier to catch and quicker to remedy.
6) Beware of phone scams. Fraudsters are becoming more sophisticated every day in order to get you to hand over your personal information over the phone. This is true not only with voice calls, but with text messages, and smartphone apps as well.
Generally speaking, if you get a request for personal information via your phone and you did not initiate the request, chances are the request is fraudulent.
This is especially true for scam calls purportedly coming from the IRS. The IRS will always notify you by mail first if there are any issues. Then and only then will they communicate using other means to resolve the issue in question, and that is usually only when you initiate the communication with them in response to a letter you may have received.
Tags: corona virus, covid-19, fraud