People lose a lot of money and sensitive information every year to telephone scammers. A couple of tactics scammers use to steal your information include imposter scams, debt relief, business investment, charity, and most recently scams involving COVID topics.
Scams can take the form of phone calls from real people, robocalls, and even text messages. Sometimes, scammers will even call and leave an incoherent greeting, baiting you to think it’s someone you know so you call them back. When you answer or return their call, your number is considered good and can potentially be shared with other fraud systems.
Good practice is to protect yourself and company by reporting telephone scams and bad business at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC also has a National “Do Not Call” registry where you can choose whether or not you want to receive telemarketing calls.
When you report a phone scam, be sure to give the number that appears on your caller ID and any number they have given you as a call back number. This can assist the FTC in identifying illegal callers as well as help other phone carriers with their call blocking efforts.
Curious how to handle other phone or online scams? Drops us a line at solutions@thetek.com
