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Scammers are generally after one of two things; they either try to steal your money now, or they try to steal your identity now to steal money from you later (or to pretend to be you to steal from others).
For many scam victims, the loss of personally identifiable information (PII) is even worse than losing money, because it’s hard to recover.
If you are the victim of a scam, here are some steps you can take to try to protect your PII and your accounts, as well as mitigate the long-term impacts of the scam.
- Put a fraud alert on your credit reports and consider freezing your credit. This will prevent thieves from opening additional lines of credit in your name and causing additional financial distress.
- Request a free credit report to make sure that existing lines of credit haven’t been compromised.
- Follow the guidelines on IdentityTheft.gov for additional recovery strategies. This free resource provided by the Federal Trade Commission will assist in helping you take the steps necessary in notify the appropriate agencies. In Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police has advice for protecting yourself from identity fraud and how to report it.
- Monitor your online accounts (banking, credit card, app payment services, etc.) at least weekly to make sure you recognize all the charges.
- Change your password regularly and don’t use the same password for multiple sites.
After you’ve taken care of yourself, please report the scam to BBB Scam Tracker (BBB.org/ScamTracker) to help warn others and to provide additional information that may be useful to law enforcement.
If a company you do business with has suffered a data breach, don’t panic. Check the company’s website or look for an email with instructions on what you should do to follow up. Many companies offer free credit monitoring after a data breach, or have other concrete measures. With so many major data breaches in the past decade, consumers should assume their data has been compromised in some way and take the same precautions as those who know they’ve been scammed.
Here are some other ways to recover from a scam:
If you’ve lost money to a retailer because of undelivered merchandised or are being told you must pay more in order to receive an item, there are several options:
- If you used a credit card, contact the credit card company using the number on the back of your card and dispute the charges.
- If you used a debit card, contact the banking institution immediately to report the loss (use the number on the back of your card).
- If you used a third-party app (PayPal, Venmo, etc.), contact them for instruction on next steps.
- If you don’t get satisfaction through these means, file a complaint at BBB.org and we will try to help you.
- If you were responding to an ad on social media (Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.), report the ad or business and tell the social media channel exactly what happened.
If you get a phone call about an opportunity that sounds too good to be true (investments, medical devices, tech support, lottery winnings), or that claim to be debt collectors, just hang up. Don’t “press 1 to be taken off our list,” as that just confirms to the robocaller that they’ve reached a real person.
Some phone calls claim to be about a family member in jeopardy, usually traveling in a foreign country, and those can be particularly frightening. If you aren’t sure, ask the person on the phone how you can get in touch with them, or ask them to call you back in 15 minutes. Then reach out to the person who is supposedly in jeopardy, or another close family member, and ask if they are traveling. Read more at BBB.org/EmergencyScam.
Phishing email and Social Media: These are the two top methods favored by cyber crooks. They like to hide on the internet and fool people into thinking they have a problem. They may say your bank account has been compromised and that you need to confirm a password via email. They may say your utility bill is overdue or that your account has been hacked. Sometimes they’re successful in messaging victims on Facebook that there is an emergency or there’s FREE money that you must claim – right now.
Here are the steps to take to identify online scammers:
- If you are still ‘chatting’ with the scammer online, please cease the conversation. The more the conversation continues, the more they will try to persuade you to give up information or press for payment of some kind.
- Delete emails that are unfamiliar to you. Banking institutions will never request personal information about your account via email. Online services, phone services and the like are commonly ‘spoofed’, and scammers impersonate these companies to get personal data.
- Contact businesses directly if you’re unsure. Use direct phone numbers you have on file for your banks, online services, and the like to confirm the information that’s being requested via email.
- Report the emails. Report phishing emails to ic3.gov and then mark them as spam.
For more tips on how to identify and avoid common scams, go to BBB.org/AvoidScams.
Report scams to BBB Scam Tracker – whether or not you lost money – to help others avoid being scammed: BBB.org/ScamTracker.