Legionnaire Kevin Horn works in cyber security and provides tips on what to look for via text, email and phone calls.
American Legion Post 321 Commander Kevin Horn in Huntersville, N.C., is educating Legionnaires and posts how not to fall prey to scammers through his Fraud Awareness Friday social media posts and in-person presentations. As someone who works in cyber security, he has seen his share of what scammers will do. For example, scammers in North Carolina are impersonating post members and as a result, a Post 321 Korean War veteran was scammed out of $1,000 in gift cards.
“It’s a problem near and dear to my heart. And the big thing is just educating people,” Horn said.
With the holiday season upon us, Horn provided the following tips on how to avoid being scammed via text, email and phone.
Verify the sender and recognize abnormal behavior. If someone you know asks you to get gift cards and keep it quiet from others, which is not their normal behavior, that’s a red flag you are being scammed. AI is making things a lot more difficult because AI is taking all the spelling mistakes and old red flags out of the equation.
Watch for gift card fraud. If anybody asks you over the phone to get gift cards, scratch off the back for the code and take a picture or read the numbers off, it’s a scam. Don’t transmit gift card information over the phone. Ever. “And if the person asking for the gift cards says something along the lines of, ‘Don’t call me. I’m in a meeting. Just please go ahead and do this and let me know when you get to the store,’ it’s a scam,” Horn said. “If they’re telling you to go to the store for gift cards, it’s a scam.”
Do not sign anything via text message. If you get a text message and it says your package cannot be delivered and that you need to sign in, do not sign in. Nobody’s going ask you to sign in via text message. If you have a package inbound, go to the websites of USPS, UPS and FedEx and create accounts so you can track packages.
Don’t click links via text message. Most of them are scams and they’re hoping that the credentials you use to log in to their scam will be reused elsewhere in another account login. Once they get the login that works, they’re going to try every account that you have with those credentials because a lot of people don’t change their passwords.
Do not send money. Anything that involves sending money first to get more money back is a sign of a scam.
Be aware of email scams. If you receive an email saying, “thank you for your purchase” or “here is your receipt of purchase” and they want you to call a number or click a clink if you did not make the purchase, that’s a scam. “If you’re reading those emails, don’t open the attachments on a computer,” Horn said. And if you get an email or voicemail to confirm a purchase authorization, login to your bank account and look at the pending charges. “If they don’t match up to what they’re saying your card was charged for, it’s a scam. Now, if it does match up, then you need to call your bank. Don’t bother calling the number of the person that left a message. Call your bank and say, ‘hey, I didn’t authorize this.’”
Don’t know the number? Don’t answer. If it’s important, they’ll leave a message. And if your answer and there’s a delay in the call when you answer, hang up. You can tell if a call is from an auto dialer, which is a common tool in marketing, because there is a delay when they answer. “My general rule is if you don’t know the number, let it go to voicemail. If it’s important and it’s a real person, they’ll leave a message. When you start doing that, you’ll see that a lot of the messages are all automated, and they’re all the same. And in those voicemails, if they say ‘we have an urgent matter to speak with Kevin Horn, you need to call us back at this number, this is related to your tax statement,’ that’s never going to happen. They don’t do that.”
Be vigilant to behavior patterns. If someone calls claiming to be your grandchild in a car accident and they need you to send money, ask questions to verify that the person you are speaking with is in fact who they say they are. “Somebody had called me many, many years ago asking for my sister. They had some general information that is easily available online, like her address. I took that as, oh, this might be legitimate. And then come to find out it’s not legitimate; it’s actually a scam. There’s so much more data out there that’s available for scammers to skim, and they can take that data and they can pull it and centralize it and build a profile based off of you.”
