Enjoying Safe Beach Days with Your Dog
31 July 2024
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In this era of fraudsters continuously innovating ways of extorting money from innocent individuals, securing the larger part of your information on the Internet is very essential, especially for relatives.
In America today, scammers are capitalizing on our parents’ or close friends’ inability to cope with modern inventions. This criminal industry continues to grow each day and last year there were more than 10% additional cases reported as compared to 2022.
The data demonstrates that the most common trick for these people is posing as a tech support agent online. The impersonation usually takes place via an unexpected phone call, sms or email that declares one of their gadgets has virus and it should be removed instantly. As a result, these attackers get full access to files containing sensitive information that may even involve finance information on a computer or phone. Tech support fraud can be more believable if the scammer seems to already know exactly what devices your loved one is using (a trick made easy thanks to data brokers).
Another type of scam that’s seen significant growth involves the attacker building a relationship with their target. Under the guise of romance, the fraudster may ask for money or fish for personal details that may help with security questions. Alternatively, they may pretend to be both a friend and a financial advisor. Once trust has been built, this “friend” will recommend putting money into a fake cryptocurrency platform, but when your loved one tries to withdraw money, it won’t be possible.
To simply put, a scam where the crook develops a relationship with his victim has also grown exponentially. For example, the scammer may ask for funds under the pretext of love or seek for personal details that can be used to answer security queries. Or they actually act as if both friends and economic advisors. After trust is built, this “friend” will suggest putting money in a fictitious cryptocurrency platform but when your loved one wants to withdraw their savings, it won’t be possible.
Thus, the question becomes how we can safeguard our loved ones from being victims of these scams?
Firstly, tech companies are aware of these schemes and are coming up with new ways to stop them. Take Google’s Pixel Phones that automatically block all calls likely to be spam or fraudulent; recently companies demonstrated AI-powered real-time alerts about potential scams.
However, while convenient, these solutions are still not enough to fully protect our parents and loved ones from online scammers. The best current way of countering such systems is by avoiding giving private information out to malicious people who want to build fake trust. This is where our friends at Incogni come to the rescue.
Among data brokers of various sorts, for instance people finder sites, they amass and keep up a stockpile of information about everyone they can be able to access and sell this information to anyone willing to buy. These could encompass names, contact information, interests as well as associated persons – enough details for a scammer’s trustworthiness.
Incogni has been fighting against the leaking of personal data to the online world. A subscription with Incogni means that your details will never be put on sale because every now and then over 170 brokers are contacted on your behalf. It is probably the closest thing we have to a “silver bullet” when it comes to stopping con artists in their tracks.
Figuring out how devastating internet fraudulence can be only gives us one option which is to shield our loved ones (and ourselves) from becoming victims. Let Incogni do all the hard work for you, not forgetting that this exclusive discount is just too good an opportunity to pass up.
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