When smartphones were first introduced, it opened the road for thousands of spam calls & SMS. Not only spam, there are calls designed to scam people as well. While scam phone calls have decreased significantly over the past few years, they still exist.
What are Scam Phone Calls?
Scam calls are simply calls made to innocent people over the phone for certain benefits. On a scam phone call, the scammers use various fraudulent attempts to trap users for financial gain or to gain certain information.
In 2015, scam calls over the phone were uncontrollable, but things changed, especially after the arrival of caller identification apps like TrueCaller or Google Dialer. These apps aim to identify incoming calls and tell you the caller’s information even before picking up a call.
Caller identification apps give you the option to choose whether to receive or reject the call. However, scammers have now become smart, using non-spam phone numbers to make calls. These numbers usually get past all caller identification or spam protection apps without revealing details.
How to Identify Scammer Phone Number
Before identifying the scammer phone numbers & calls, it’s important to know the most common types of phone scams. Simply read out the next part to understand the most common types of phone call scams.
What are the Common Types of Phone Scams?
As we know, there are various types of phone scams, and some of them could be dangerous. For example, in tech support scams, the scam callers claim to be from a popular tech company and inform the receiver that their PC has been infected. Then, they offer to fix the problem by charging a fee or gaining remote access to the PC.
Similarly, phishing scam calls trick you into providing sensitive information like account passwords, credit card details, etc. Below, we have highlighted some of the most common phone scams you should look out for.
Tech Support Scams
In tech support scams, the scam callers claim to be from a popular tech company and inform the receiver that their PC has been infected. Then, they offer to fix the problem by charging a fee or gaining remote access to the PC.
Arrest Threats
Some phone scammers pose themselves as officers from the police departments and give Arrest threats to innocents. The scammers make the entire process look legitimate and ask for information or fake penalty fees.
Fake Charities Scam
Scammers often take advantage of good-natured humanitarians and reach out to people by creating fake charities & donations. Fake Charities scams usually demand money.
Debt Relief
Everyone wants to be debt-free and live a simple life; scammers often exploit this. Scammers often market fake debt relief schemes and ask you to pay a fake processing fee. Sometimes, the scammers can also ask to provide sensitive information like your bank account details, login OTPs, etc.
Phishing Scam
As we have mentioned above, there are phishing scam calls that trick you into providing sensitive information like account passwords, credit card details, etc.
Contest Wins
This is another popular form of phone scam that’s trending these days. In this scam, the victims receive calls informing them about fake contest wins or lottery prizes, but they need to pay the processing fees & taxes to claim them.
Health Insurance Scams
In this phone scam, the scammer claims to be from a legitimate health insurance company. They usually present victims with attractive health insurance plans that look too good to be real. Scammer convince victims into believing it’s true and providing sensitive financial information & paying the fake fee.
Job Offer Scams
In this form of phone scam, the scammers offer fake offers to the victims. The job offers are often very lucrative and force the victims to provide personal information, fees for initial training, or fees for securing the position.
So, these are some forms of scam phone calls that are trending. Hence, consider these scam calls before providing sensitive details over phone calls.
How Do You Tell if a Number Is a Scam?
Now, let’s move to the essential part of the article. To protect yourself from all sorts of scams, you should be able to identify the scam phone numbers.
Scammers may use different phone numbers to trap you and gain your personal & financial information. So, it’s best to take proper security steps to safeguard such calls on Android or iPhone.
The easiest way to detect a scam call is to notice the location of the call. If the call is not from your home country, it’s likely a scammer. If you get calls from outside your home country repetitively, it clearly indicates a scammer.
You can also use apps on your Android & iPhone like TrueCaller, ShowCaller, or Google Dialer to know who’s calling you even before picking up a call. Apps like TrueCaller are a good pick as they clearly tell you about the scam & spam calls.
So, the best way to get started is by installing a caller identification app on your Android or iPhone. Alternatively, you can use reverse number lookup apps for Android.
How to Tell if a Call Is a Scam (If already picked)
As we all know, scammers have become smart and use fresh or virtual phone numbers to carry out their scams. So, sometimes, certain phone numbers can get past your caller Identification apps or call spam protection feature of your smartphone.
So, if you have already picked up a scam phone call, you can look for these hints to identify a scam effectively.
Asking for Passwords or OTPs
It’s important to note that original customer support never asks you to tell you the password or share OTPs. If any caller asks for passwords, it’s an apparent scam.
You should refrain from giving out your personal information, like account details, passwords, and OTPs, to anyone unknown.
Asking to Provide Remote Access to Your PC
Have you ever heard Microsoft or any other well known tech company asking you to provide remote access? Microsoft asks its users to provide the event viewer log data to troubleshoot specific problems, but they never ask you to provide remote access.
So, if anyone calls over the phone asking you to provide remote access to a computer, it will likely be a scam. Even if your PC is fine, they would create a problem and ask you for money to fix it.
Insurance Policies or Benefits that look too good to be real
Everyone loves gifts, and scammers take advantage of this. Scammers can trick you into believing you’ve won a lottery or a prize; don’t fall for these traps.
They may even trick you into believing that you’re actually eligible for that alluring insurance or health policy.
Just take a deep breath and think: have you ever entered any contest or expected a lottery prize? If the answer is no, chances are that those attractive policies, prizes, etc are fake.
Refusing to give enough information
Anyone from a legitimate company would never refuse to give you additional information about the topic you’re discussing. Someone claiming your ‘friend’, or ‘relative’ is in trouble but can’t provide an actual name is likely to be a scam.
It’s best to avoid dealing with people over the phone who provide incomplete or false information about things.
So, this guide is all about how to tell if it’s a scammer’s phone number. Scam calls can be very dangerous; hence, educating yourself about common scams is important. Let us know if you need more clarification on understanding specific scam calls.