18 tips on how not to get scammed when your phone rings

Ben Rothke
5 min readJul 26, 2022
https://new.mgnonline.com/

In my article This is what a scammer sounds like, I have over 100 audio clips of my calls with phone scammers. From Amazon scammers, social security fraud warrant scammers, and more, the number of robocalls yearly is increasing. And Americans are losing more and more money.

Scammers particularly target the elderly, as they are particularly vulnerable. This is due to several factors, including their giving and trusting nature, having time on their hands, often having lots of money, not being tech-savvy, and being susceptible to Medicare scams.

Why do phone scammers do this? As Willie Sutton (didn’t) said: that’s where the money is. Scammers today know where the money is — that’s why they call you. A day’s booty for a scammer can support their family in a 3rd-world country for a year. And they know the odds of them being caught and prosecuted are extraordinarily low.

These scammers operate as well-oiled businesses like those executing wrong-number text scams.

They are large, sophisticated, well-run, and scam millions of innocent victims.

Many people can no longer answer their phones due to the number of robocalls they receive daily. But knowing their shady tactics and deceptive techniques, you can avoid being a victim.

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Ben Rothke
Ben Rothke

Written by Ben Rothke

I work in information security at Tapad. Write book reviews for the RSA blog, & a Founding member of the Cloud Security Alliance and Cybersecurity Canon.

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