Beware of scammers and their latest tactics
Take a breath -- that's advice, step one, on how to deal with potential scammers.
The Identity Theft Resource Center says that there is so much personal information on social media, like where you eat, what and who with, how many pets you have, and where you like to spend your free time, that scammers have figured out how to curate their scams to each individual.
"It's about these thieves knowing what's going to resonate with you … 'I'm not going to hit this person up with an investment scam, that's not what they talk about on their social media profile. They always talk about how they volunteer … I'm going to hit them with a charity scam.'" said Eva Valasquez of the Identity Theft Resource Center.
This is where 'take a breath' comes into play. When an email, text, or phone call comes in from an unexpected source, take time to verify the source. This may mean hanging up the phone and calling the bank, charity, or entity.
Data breaches are becoming a tangible gateway for thieves to better target their victims. For example, spoofing a bank's number and calling only bank customers so targets are more likely to trust the scammer is becoming more common.
According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau charity scams often increase during the holiday season and during times of natural disasters and emergencies, like storms, wildfires, or earthquakes. The bureau warns to be careful when any charity asks for donations, especially ones that say they're following up on a donation pledge you don't remember making. Again, ask for detailed information about the charity, hang up and verify through a website or a trusted third-party source to confirm the charity is real.
The majority of people who reported identity crimes had an existing account taken over, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center. IRS accounts were the most commonly targeted federal accounts, at 84%. For financial accounts, 46% of takeovers were checking accounts. Social media accounts, 81%, were the most common non-government, non-financial account to be targeted by scammers. And for state accounts, it's 57% unemployment and 25% DMV accounts.