Well, it's a new year and there's new scams. So just like every year,
I'm going to make this video going over a bunch of scams that are either brand new
or maybe they're not even new, but they're becoming more popular recently
or they're new variation on an old scam that you should watch out for
coming into 2022. But of course, the best way to defend against them is to simply know about them.
So you should be good by the end of the video for these, at least. So starting out with number one,
we have the Google Voice verification scam, and this one's really tricky because you might not
even realize that you were tricked by the end of it. This one usually targets people
who are selling things online, such as on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist,
but really anywhere that people post their phone number to be contacted.
And this even includes, sadly, people who are looking for lost pets,
for example. So how this scam works is they'll first contact you and say
they're a little bit hesitant. They want to verify you're a real person, or
verify that you're the real pet's owner, or verify anything really. And then they'll say that they're
going to send a verification text or may also be a voice phone call, and it'll be from Google Voice.
It'll say Google Voice verification text, and then a code, and they'll ask you to
give that code to them. And if you do, even if you don't have a Google Voice account,
they've got you. So let me explain. Google Voice is basically a service where you get assigned
a virtual phone number that ties to your main phone number, and then you can then
receive calls on the virtual phone number that gets forwarded to your main number.
Or you can also make calls from the Google Voice number, the virtual number. And in this scam,
what the scammer is trying to do is set up a new Google Voice account with the Google Voice number,
except it'll be associated to you, the victim, not them.
Because when they set it up, they enter in a phone number that it will be associated with,
and then it sends that phone number, of course, a verification text. And if you give that,
then they can basically sign up for an account under your number. And this is basically just a
way for the scammers to get a nearly unlimited supply of new phone numbers because normally,
obviously, you need a specific phone number to sign up for each account.
But if they're going from person to person online, they can just trick everyone into signing up and
get a whole bunch of numbers. And then those numbers would be used to scam other people.
So in this one, you might particularly not lose any money or anything. But still,
your number is going to now be associated with some random Google Voice account.
And if you do get tricked, you basically have to go through a process which is called reclaiming
your number, which I believe involves just signing up for your own Google Voice account
and then re-verifying with your phone number. But it'll now be switched
on to your actual account that you created, and take it off the other one.
So, yeah, just be aware of this one, because you might not have realized that this was even
possibly a scam. All right next up, we have these Zelle payment scam, and this one's interesting
because you might not even realize that a lot of banks, possibly even your bank, uses Zelle
and may have automatically signed you up so you can receive payments or send payments
through Zelle, even though you never really made an account for it. And that's what the
scammers take advantage of. So how this scam works, is scammers will send out mass
text messages to a whole bunch of people and it'll say something like,
"fraud detected, if you did not make this charge for whatever amount of dollars, reply
no or yes". And no matter what you respond, if you do respond at all,
they will then call you from a spoofed number to look like the bank and pretend to be the bank's
fraud department. Then they'll say something like, "Oh, we need to verify your identity"
and they'll ask for your bank username, not your password, which some people might be
thrown off by. And the reason for this is what they're going to try and do is go through the
password reset process with you on the phone, but you don't realize that's what's happening.
So they basically go onto the bank's website, put in the username you just gave them and say forgot
password, which will then, with Zelle at least apparently trigger a text message to be sent to
the phone number associated with it. Which again, is your number, but you might not realize that it
is. And what they'll say is, "Oh, I'm going to be sending you a SMS message with a verification
code, and you'll have to read that back to me to make sure you're legit" or whatever.
And unbeknownst to you, that's not a verification text code, it's a code to
reset your password. Anyway, so once they get this number, they basically are able to get
into your bank account and potentially even change your password. And because
Zelle is tied to your bank account usually, they can use this to send money out of it.
Now, I believe in some scenarios when they do go to try and transfer money out, it will
also trigger another confirmation text message. So what they'll probably do is keep you on the line,
and they'll say that, "hey you're going to get a text message and it's the refund confirmation. So
you have to make sure that you confirm it because I'm sending
the money back into your account that was stolen" or something like that.
Meanwhile no, it's actually a confirmation for money coming out of your account to the
scammer. So you have to be aware of that, that they will say really anything to get you to put
in these codes or confirm the text message. And this one is actually part of a larger trend of
scammers realizing they can get around two factor authentication using SMS codes, because a lot of
websites stupidly basically make it so a text message turns into a one factor authentication,
where you can reset your password with nothing but the confirmation code on your phone,
which then opens up the possibility of scammers simply asking people for it.
And even though usually it says, never share this code with anyone,
people apparently do it anyway. And what's actually apparently really bad about this one,
is a lot of banks they say in their terms of service that the Zelle transfer doesn't
actually get covered under certain fraud terms. So you kind of might just be out that money.
So definitely be aware of this one. All right onto the next one, we have the cloud access job scam.
And this one is another interesting one because it doesn't always scam
the person directly, but rather uses them sort of like the Google Voice scam
to scam other people. Although sometimes depending on the situation, you can be scammed directly.
So how this scam works is the scammers will post a fake job listing online,
which people will respond to, and they may even do
a mock interview where they don't really show their face, of course. But maybe it's a text
interview or over chat or something like that. And then they'll offer you the job, of course.
And then afterwards they'll say something like, "Oh, well we do have some requirements
for you to actually be getting into this job and we have to have you sign this tax form and
an NDA". And first of all with the tax form, that's not even the main part of the scam,
but they might be kind of double dipping by when you do fill that information out,
like with your Social Security number, they might take that and use that later against you.
But the main part of the scam is actually this other document, which they may call an NDA,
and it'll say things like, "Oh, to get this job, you need to confirm that you're willing
to go through our setup process within 24 hours or else you won't get the job".
And this process basically involves you signing up for a cloud computing account. Whether that's AWS,
Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud, something like that.
And the payoff for the scammers is they'll ask you, all right, after you set it up,
give us the username and password and we can complete our setup process. And then once you do,
of course, then they can use that Google Cloud or AWS account for nefarious purposes.
A lot of times these accounts will have a starting bonus credit or something like a trial credit,
and those users now used your information that you're now associated with for fraud, which
obviously is not good. Or sometimes I believe they may even get you to add your credit card number to
the account and then say, "Oh, we'll reimburse you and we'll give you a bonus if you do this".
And then of course, they can not only just charge the trial credit, but then start using your credit
card information for fraudulent purposes by running, maybe a DDoS attack, or whatever
they want to use these computing resources from this account on other people. So if
someone asks you to sign up for an account and then you give them the username and password,
that's really suspicious because why couldn't they have just done that for you then?
So just be wary that these types of scams are out there. Up next, we have post-disaster scams,
which is a more general category. And these are becoming more common simply because
there is more things happening. For example, in 2021, there is that huge "tornado outbreak",
it's being called where a whole bunch of homes across the United States were destroyed,
and then scammers of course lined up to take advantage of this.
For example, you may see an advertisement or receive a text or phone call, whatever,
and it'll say, "Hey, you're eligible for FEMA relief funds. You can get some money
and you just have to pay this fee and then we'll get you the funds". And obviously,
fees for FEMA relief are not a thing. It's a scam to just take your money.
Some scammers may also pretend to be government officials as part of the relief effort and
say that, "oh, to help you out or get you whatever resources, we need to first get your personal
information and your banking information", or maybe even transfer money directly. And of course,
it's the same idea, that they might use it to steal your identity, something like that.
So just be very suspicious and only sign up for any kind of resources through official
government websites. And an example of one apparently that was more frequent
was these scammy debris removal services, where they were not qualified professionals or anything.
But they would advertise these services to remove debris from your home or wherever. And they would
either demand outrageous prices way above market rate that didn't even make sense to scammy levels,
or they may demand money upfront and then
have crappy work and then refuse to refund you, or just crappy work in general.
So of course, just remember even if you go through a disaster. Still try and take the time to vet
some of these people that are claiming to be who they are, they might not be. All right,
moving on, we have the Geek Squad subscription scam. And no, this is not saying that Geek
Squad is the scam, but rather scammers using that name as part of the scam.
Now this scam is actually really similar to other scams, but usually the scammers
use something like Amazon. So I'd never seen it used before with Geek Squad,
so I figured I'd bring it up. And how this one works is they'll send you a text message
or probably an email, that will be a fake subscription renewal confirmation.
And then they'll say, "Oh, to contact for information about this order,
contact this phone number", of course, which is going to contact the scammer. And then from there,
it's the usual. They ask you, "Oh, what's your credit card info? So we can confirm the order",
or something like that. And of course, they just use that to steal and take your money.
And the way to defend against these scams, is to simply call the official phone number
on the actual retailer's website. So in this case, you go on Best Buy's actual website,
check their actual phone number, don't rely on the one there's in the email if
you really want to check for it, or just kind of be able to recognize that it is a scam.
And also just be aware that these types of scams are not just happening for
Apple, iTunes and Amazon anymore, it's more obscure services. All right,
onto the next scam is the Omicron PCR testing scam. And apparently
this one is happening mostly in the United Kingdom, but really could happen anywhere.
And basically, how it works is you'll get a text message or an email, something like that.
Maybe even see an advertisement, that claims to be a way to get a free
COVID Omicron test. And in the United Kingdom, at least the one that's mostly going around
sends you to a website that looks like the NHS, the National Health Service. And basically, you
have to fill out all your personal information, potentially even a credit card information,
and then they'll just steal whatever you put in. And then you don't get the test, obviously.
And I remember actually talking about this scam I think last year,
where it was obviously not Omicron, but it was the same story, scammers pretending to be
a government agency. And in that one, they did ask for your credit card number for
a fee. So just be aware, to always only go to the official website and make sure you check that URL.
Now this next scam is definitely not new, but it does show, I think, that scammers are
becoming more bold in their scams, and that is that some of them are using even prop,
fake money to pay for things they are buying from you online. And this actually did happen
to someone on Reddit, they posted about it, which is where I got this example.
Where they sold their iPad in a public place and the person handed them fake prop money,
where on it it literally says "for motion picture use only". But they, I guess,
didn't inspect it close enough. And you can kind of see it looks different. And they also
mention it was very, very cold out, which could have been the reason maybe why he didn't notice
that it felt different because your hands are a little bit more numb.
Now in this example specifically, they were given 100 dollar bills, but theoretically
it could happen with any denomination. So if you do receive large bills from anyone really,
always be sure to maybe give it an extra glance to make sure it is at least passably real. And I
think if you are selling something to a stranger, then check it no matter what the denomination is.
Even if it's very small, you want to make sure they're not giving
you anything fake that's smaller, because people might not check smaller bills. Now,
I was under the impression that prop money was supposed to be either larger or smaller
or have some other characteristics that made it easy to spot up close as being fake,
but either the scammers modified it somehow or the person really didn't look close at all. OK,
coming near the end, we still have a couple more. This next one is child tax credit scams. Now,
last year in the United States, the federal government did send out payments in the
form of tax credits, depending on if you had children and stuff like that.
But theoretically, this could happen anywhere in the world for any government program
that is involving sending money to people. And what scammers have been doing
is at the time these payments were going out and still to this day continuing,
saying that, "Oh well, you qualify for this tax credit", or
maybe by this point they'll say, "Oh, you're qualifying to get another tax credit".
And how this one works is not really a new story.
They contact you via text message or voicemail or whatever email, and they'll say, "Hey,
you qualify for this tax credit. You can get this amount of money, but you have to do x y z first".
And really the sky is the limit after you contact them and believe it, they could ask
for personal information, banking information a fee or something for the bank transfer.
Whatever they say, they're probably going to try and get as much as they can out of you. And if you
do seem like a gullible person, they might not stop at just asking for identity information,
but maybe even try to get you to directly pay with a credit card,
stuff like that. OK, finally we have the Emergency Broadband Program impersonators.
Now this one is actually a really run-of-the-mill scam in terms of the technique, but I wanted
to point this one out because the real program, not the scam one, obviously,
is actually something I think most people should at least know about,
so I wanted to mention it. It's just another federal program here in the USA.
But basically, if you qualify, the government apparently will give you
a refund of, or a kind of a rebate of, 50 bucks a month for internet service,
and like 100 for any laptop you purchase. So that might be worth checking if you're
struggling to pay for your internet bill, especially in these times of remote work.
You might want to look into that, of course, just on the official government website.
Don't believe any of these scammers. So let me get to that. The main notable
thing I noticed about this game when I was reading is that apparently scammers are using
social media advertising to spread it, not just spam texts and stuff like that. And a
lot of people may fall for it because they may expect to get spam on their text message
or email , but maybe not see scams in social media advertising like on Facebook or something.
And then what happens, is you click on this advertisement or click on the link,
maybe they do send an email. And then it's the usual "Oh,
take sign up for this. We need your identity information. We need you to pay this fee",
whatever. So just remember if you do see advertisements for some government program,
even if it is a real thing, definitely look it up yourself on the actual government website.
Google the actual website, don't necessarily take an advertisement at face value. So by now,
you should be at least more aware of some of the more popular scams, though don't think that these
are the only ones going around. But if you are aware of the general patterns of these scams,
at the end of the day, they're kind of similar so you can start to recognize them,
even if it's not exactly the same.
Now, if you guys want to keep watching,
the next video I'd recommend is one I made talking about how scammers are using new automated bots
to trick people into giving away two factor authentication codes. Like I mentioned that's
kind of a pattern, and it's a little bit different than what I even mentioned here.
So definitely check that one out. So you're aware of it. So thanks so much watch, guys,
and I'll see in the next one.