Tactics scammers use to steal from you and how to protect yourself

Scammers employ diverse strategies to deceive individuals on the internet and take advantage of their weaknesses. These strategies frequently rely on people's feelings, emotions, and sense of urgency to deceive them into acting in the scammer's favour. 

These are the top tricks used by scammers.

Frequent random phone calls.

Scammers occasionally use a wide range of possible victims to assess who is susceptible. 

Victims may have their guard up at first, their aim is to slowly gain victims’ trust. Scammers begin by making insignificant demands in an attempt to gain trust. We are more inclined to comply with greater demands after granting these small requests, motivated by a desire to behave consistently.

Urgency and Fear

Scammers create a sense of urgency or fear to pressure victims into quick decisions. They might claim that immediate action is required to avoid dire consequences, such as legal trouble or financial losses.

Scammers play on your emotions to provoke reactions that cloud judgment. They use threatening phrases such as your number or account will be discontinued to catch the victim off-guard by creating a sense of urgency.

Tech support solutions

If someone calls you unexpectedly and offers assistance, find a way to verify their identity. Do not allow an unknown person to remotely connect to your computer, M-Pesa or bank details without proper verification, even if they appear to have a solution to your problem.

In this case, the scammer creates a situation where they help you to solve a real or imaginary problem, they ask for personal details like password and pin and identification card and use the information to scam you.

Impersonation

Scammers impersonate trusted individuals and entities hence to appeal to authority.

They may create fake social media profiles to establish a sense of trust before making requests for money or information.

Some scammers will pose as customer care or managers in an organization associated with you like banks. They tend to prey on the fact that you trust this entity and you might give information oblivious of the implications. 

Stating they are not asking for personal information

Stating they are not asking for personal information is another indicator that you might be exposed to a scam. Scammers know asking for personal information could raise alarm bells for a person.

Instead, they may say they are not looking to obtain this information, or they are not looking for an exchange of funds over the phone, which may cause potential victims to let down their guard. This is why scammers often use gift cards to extract payment.

Stay away from scenarios that put pressure on you to make a decision, adopt a healthy dose of scepticism and trust your instincts.