Month: February 2025

I don’t know exactly what it is (perhaps somebody out there can tell me!), but last month (February 2025) seemed to be a high-water mark of scammers calling, texting, or emailing clients. (And me as well!) Now are these grifters proliferating because they need the business, or because they’ve found a formula that works? Again, the great unknown. 

Although the fine points of each hoax varies, there IS one thing they all have in common; they play upon your emotions with scare tactics. You’re going to lose your data! You’ll be locked out of your bank! You just paid for a laptop that’s being shipped somewhere far away! On and on it goes. 

Now how do these scams meet your eyeballs?

Email: The most common method. You’ll get an email alerting you to some impending doom.

Webpage: Once in a while, you’ll stumble onto a webpage that will set off alarm bells (literally) and claim your data will be destroyed if you leave said webpage. 

Text: A text (from a sender NOT in your contacts list) will have you click a link or (less often), contain a PDF for you to open. 

Phone call: A caller from some “official” organization (Apple, Microsoft, Social Security, IRS, etc.) will claim there’s a problem with your account. This approach is diminishing, as either laws, phone company involvement, public awareness, or just plain oversaturation has killed this way of “doing business.”

So, let’s take a close look at these scams and see what common DNA they share. 

They come out of the blue: You’re sitting around, minding your own business, when suddenly someone (usually an important someone) alerts you to a problem you didn’t even know you had. 

There’s money involved: A large percentage of these involve some payment you’ve supposedly made, but in reality, you didn’t.

There is a sense of urgency: If you don’t respond in a timely manner, something terrible will happen – a vital service will be terminated, your credit card will be charged, your data will be lost, etc. 

You’re hectored multiple times in the same email to act (again, playing on your emotions): You’re warned of a dire outcome [CLICK HERE], life as you know it will never be the same [CLICK HERE], etc.

There are several tells in these scam emails:

Look for non-U.S. English use of numbers: For example, “+1” before a phone number (that’s an overseas thing), non-dollar currency symbols (￡699.33), or just plain sloppiness in the way things are presented (such as writing “PayPal” as “Paypal”) or using the currency symbol incorrectly (280.75$).

Also check the wording: See the MacOS Security Center example – Apple would NEVER call one of its computers a “PC!” Plus, note the space after the “t” in “Alert” and the “!”

Click on the sender’s email: Most of the time, it is NOT from the domain it claims it is. See PayPal example – a legitimate email from PayPal would NOT have a @gmail.com domain from the sender. (Though this can be spoofed, so don’t use this as your only litmus test!)

One good thing about Google: Even if you disagree with some (or all) of its policies, it IS good at keeping junk mail out of your inbox as well as keeping legitimate mail out of the junk mailbox. (See inbox example below.) One quick note; some of the emails reference popular providers (McAfee and Netflix, to name two) that I personally do not subscribe to. And I’ve never gambled at a casino. Not even one thin dime…

Good rule: If you ever need to log into ANY account, log in using your preferred web browser, NEVER from an email or text link!