The scam doesn’t affect a particular type of people, they affect all type — either big or small. You could get scam within a few hours, and you won’t know until someone points2 that you have being scam. The word ‘scam’ is a con game, and I don’t want to get to see anyone get scam — because if you’re a scam before, or know someone who has been — you’ll get to feel it.
In 2020, the year of the pandemic — we have seen scams tie up to the sake of their cause, which led people to give out their hard-earned money to scammers. Making this work is imposed by a different method of scamming. And one of the most commonly used is dating, but that did change when the coronavirus news came out.
A new narrative was imposed by these scammers to collect money from their victims in anyways there is. There go as far as persuading their victim to even borrow money to pay them.
The biggest scams and fraud threat of 2020 is from online, and you need to regularly know how to avoid them. The most popular of them all is impersonating; pretending to be someone else or a company. Once their victim falls for them, they’ll ask for their social security number or ask them to send money — and of course, because of love — the individual will, and their money will be gone.
These are the biggest scam that happens in the year 2020
COVID-19 online scams
The virus scam time; from this time, it looks like the pandemic created a new scam technique that scammers are now using. Because when the coronavirus pandemic started, scammers started taking advantage of it, by impersonating, and scamming people with their money — through fake authorities health website.
With several approaches, these scammers were able to penetrate their victim. And the most common they did was:
Creating a fake health organization, it’s not surprising that people will go the extra mile to get what they want. Scammers pose as health authorities to offer cures, tests, or other COVID-19 information in exchange for money.
Scammers created websites that sell a fake products like face masks, hand sanitizer, and other high-demand products that you’ll never get to see after you made the purchase.
Scammers claiming to issue updates and payments on behalf of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) or local tax authority.
Scammers impersonating banks, debt collectors, or investors with offers designed to steal your financial information.
Fake nonprofit donation requests. Many people like to donate to charitable causes to help with disaster relief.
Authorized push payment (APP) scams
In simple terms, it means that you’ll transfer your money to them without any limitation because you have authorized it. And this is done by scammers who posed as an organization to convinced you to transfer money to an account control by them. They impersonate organizations such as banks, utility companies to make you easily transfer money to them.
Phishing scams
A phishing scam is still impersonating. These scammers act as organization such as your bank, school, or service company that sent an email for you to verify personal information such as email addresses and passwords, once you do that they steal your information and exposes your computer to attack.
For phishing scammers they always claim these:
- Say they’ve noticed suspicious activity or log-in attempts on your account.
- Claim there’s a problem with your account or payment information.
- Say you need to confirm or update personal information.
- Include a fake invoice.
- Ask you to click on a link to make a payment
- Claim you’re eligible to sign up for a government refund.
- Offer a coupon for free goods or services.
Investment scams
In an Investment scam, the scammer will convince you to transfer money into an account, or a cryptocurrency wallet to pay for an investment that will bring higher returns without financial risk. Investment products now recently offered is cryptocurrency.
Any investment that promises a very high rate of return in a very short space of time is very likely to be a scam.
Invoice fraud
If you receive an email from someone you have done business with before asking you to change the bank details you have on record for them it’s probably a scam, an Invoice scam. It’s where the scammers duplicate a person’s email and intercept a legitimate invoice payment, with that, the scammers convince the victim to redirect the money to their account that their bank details have been changed.
This is often done through email hacking and interception. Make sure you change your password regularly and make it complex and difficult to guess.
Telephone scams
If you have ever received a telephone call from someone claiming to be your bank, or a company convincing you that you’ll be getting a free product — it’s probably a scam. These scammers often ask for your bank details or ask you to invest your money in some kind of opportunity that would yield a return.
Romance scams
Fall in love online with a fake military man or doctor and you sent him money to help financially — to cut the story short you have been scam. The person behind the sense can be anyone who just wants to get a quick buck; so all they do is looking for prey that they can convince to send them money. And they’re very good at sweet-talking to a lady.
It’s a step, find the one who has money, message, fall in love, trust, and send money — and again they keep sending money.
Everyone at some point has been a scam, and to make sure you don’t get there again, you must know how you can avoid it. For any cause, any account or calls you have seen not wanting, you may want to avoid it. If you regularly use Facebook you might want to read this to know how to avoid a Facebook scam.
As long as these types of scams still work for them, they’ll keep on using them to exploit their victim. To not be a victim you’ll have to know how to identify these scams.
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