Knowing common fraud terms and tactics that scammers use helps you recognize to avoid falling victim to scam and fraudulent practices. Keeping educated on the latest fraudulent practices, can protect your personal and financial well-being, and ensure that you don’t experience the pain, hardship, and stress that often comes with being scammed.
Staying informed is your first line of defense, and CurrentScams.com is here to help with our…
List of Fraud Terms and what they mean:
- Catfishing: This is where the scammer creates a fake identity on social media or a dating sites intending to deceive people into a romantic relationship, usually for financial gain.
- Pharming: Redirecting users from legitimate websites to a fake one that usually looks like a real company’s website.
- Phishing: Scammers pose as a legitimate company with the intention of tricking individuals into sharing financial or sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details. This can occur via email or malicious websites.
- Ransomware: Malicious software that encrypts a victim’s data. The attacker then demands payment (ransom) for the decryption key needed for the owner to get access back to their data.
- Advance-Fee Fraud: This is where the victim is promised a significant sum of money, but is asked to pay a small upfront fee. The scammer then collects the fee and disappears without delivering on the promise.
- Skimming: The illegal copying of information from the magnetic stripe or chip of a credit or debit card, typically done by using devices such as a skimmer or shimmer. Gas pumps and stand-alone ATM’s are generally where you’ll find these
- Smishing: Phishing via text message
- Juice Jacking: When a scammer loads malware onto public USB charging station.
- Spoofing: When a scammer disguises a communication to make it seem like it is coming from a trusted source. This can happen with emails, phone calls and websites.
- Spyware: A type of malware scammers use to gather data from electronic devices
- Vishing: Phishing via phone; when a scammer makes deceptive phone calls.
- Identity Theft: Where someone wrongfully obtains and uses another person’s personal information and uses it for financial gain.
- Malware: Malicious Software used to commit cyber-crime
- Bait and Switch: A deceptive marketing practice where customers are suckered in with the promise of a great deal on a product and is then redirected to a more expensive item.
- Impostor Scams: With this type of scam, fraudsters impersonate legitimate organizations and their employees.They may pose as officials from your bank (even the fraud department), the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security Administration, a law enforcement agency or a package delivery service like UPS. They may claim you are behind on your payments, or that you must provide information to receive a payment, delivery or continued service. The best way to avoid these scams is simply not to respond.
- Financial Fraud: financial fraud is about gaining a person’s trust and then prompting them to do something quickly. Many scams rely on “social engineering” tactics, which blend a plausible story or request with a sense of urgency. And while your money is often their objective, fraudsters also target personal information, such as your bank account number, Social Security number or account passwords.
