Epidemic of digital scams: How to protect yourself and elderly family members from frauds
Though I typically focus on investment topics, I’m shifting gears to discuss a different aspect of finance: digital financial security. There have been numerous instances, where senior citizens have been primarily targeted in digital thefts. Are we going through a spate of financial frauds, wherein someone calls you with a story, and if you are gullible, you end up giving money digitally? Apparently, there have been crores of attempted frauds in the past few months.
I believe this because I don’t know anyone, family, friend or colleague, who hasn’t faced such an attempt in recent months. If we have wall-to-wall coverage of such frauds, and if practically every person with a phone is facing this, surely there must have been crores, maybe tens of crores, of such attempts in the past few months. There’s no real data, but this is the impression I’ve gathered from everyone I’ve spoken to.
There are other clues to the mass targeting nature of these frauds.
Some people have reported getting recorded messages that seek an automated response. It goes something like: “There is a legal problem with a courier package that you have sent. Please press 1 to know more details.” This is a clever way for the criminals to increase their footprint.
Those who have heard of this so-called Fedex scam hang up, while susceptible victims press 1. The automated system appears to function as a pre-filter to increase the success rate. This shows that the people running these scams are highly organised and use the same technology as legitimate businesses that use IVR systems.
