3 Common Ways Scammers Contact You and How to Protect Yourself

Watch out for these common scams and use Getcontact’s scam phone number lookup before giving out your information.

Imagine you’re in the middle of your work day and you get a call out of the blue from an unknown number. You pick it up hesitantly and a voice on the other end of the call tells you that he’s a representative from your bank. He tells you that there’s been some suspicious activity on your account and that he needs to walk you through some security features in order to retrieve money that you’ve lost. What do you do? If you panic and do what he says, you will have fallen for one of the more popular scams of the day and you could lose a significant amount of money.

Common Scams

The above scenario is one of the more common phone scams. The rise of quick money transferring apps has made these scams even easier and more widespread. Cash app scams often begin with a scene like this: someone claiming to be your bank or utility company calls you and tells you that you must urgently transfer money or risk negative consequences. Cash app scams, utilizing the US bank transfer app, are perpetrated constantly, and many who are duped in this way struggle to get their money back, as these cash app scams move money fast and are often very difficult to track.

1.E-commerce Scams

E-commerce scams  are also on the rise. Similar to the above scenario, people receive automated messages from someone claiming to be an e- commerce sites representative informing them that there is fraud on their account. They then walk the person through giving out their credit card information and account login details. Once they have all the information they need, identity theft is easy as pie.

2.Marketplace Scams

Marketplace has become a hotspot for scams. People often make fake accounts to sell something that doesn’t exist and then persuade potential buyers to send them payment for the item before they send it. Then, once they’ve received payment, their account is quickly deleted, making it all but impossible for a duped buyer to get their money back. This is just one of the many scams that has been devised for Marketplace specifically.

3.Social Media Scams

Social media platforms has also become a hotbed for scams. Scammers will often make a fake account, copy the name and profile picture of someone you know, then message you to ask you to send them money. Other times fake accounts with pictures of a beautiful woman will send flirtatious messages to men in the hopes of luring them to other platforms where they can bamboozle them out of their money.

How to Protect Yourself from Scammers

How to Spot a Scam

Protecting yourself from scammers begins with being suspicious of anyone you don’t know who contacts you. Someone calling using a blocked number or no caller ID should be an immediate red flag. Representatives from financial institutions or places where you have an account will rarely contact you over the phone unless you’ve called them first, so if you experience something like that, it’s likely a scam. Scammers often make a situation seem urgent because the faster they get your money or information, the harder they are to trace and the less likely that you’ll calm down and realize what is happening.

So slow down, breathe, and investigate.

Getcontact Spam Protection

One of the easiest things you can do to investigate someone who seems sketchy is to do a phone number search. Getcontact has a free caller ID lookup service designed to flag scam phone numbers. Before you take anything someone says over the phone at face value, run their telephone number through Getcontact. Users can flag a phone number with explanatory information about the caller and block phone numbers as telemarketers or scammers.

Now, imagine you’re planning to buy something from a marketplace. You exchange phone numbers with your seller so that you can come look at an item in person, but then the seller starts insisting that you send the money first, or perhaps something else feels uncomfortable about this transaction. This is the perfect time to do a phone number search on Getcontact. Most scammers have scammed before, so find out if you’re dealing with a notorious scammer before giving any money or information to someone you don’t know.

How to Block Scam Calls

Getcontact is also one of the most effective spam-blocking apps. If you have an Android device, as soon as you download the Getcontact app, it will automatically start blocking spam calls as long as you give it permission to do so. On an iOS device you have to click “Enable Protection” from the app’s bottom menu. You can then choose either to “Block all spam calls” or “Show warning for spam and fraud calls.” Once you’ve done this, Getcontact will automatically block or warn you about all calls its algorithm has flagged as spam, including all calls coming from numbers that other users have reported as scam phone numbers.

Once you have Getcontact, if a scammer does somehow manage to contact you, you might want to know how to report a scammer. When you block a particular caller on Getcontact, a menu will come up to ask you to report this number as a telemarketer, a scammer, spam or someone who simply makes you feel uncomfortable for other reasons. Once you’ve reported an unwanted caller, that telephone number will now be flagged for all other users.

Protect yourself before scammers contact you so you won’t be sorry later.