Rinchi
TechInAfrica – Christmas is around the corner, meaning that we have to be extra careful of scamming activities from fraudsters. Many criminals often take actions on holiday season like Christmas for two main reasons.
Firstly, your attention will focus more on Christmas parties and shopping that you will have no much time to examine an email link from a delivery service or a store. As you are in a rush when doing the activities, you may not be bothered to check or think twice when someone tries to scams. You also may easily tell more detailed information over the phone or an email to a scammer who pretends to send packages to your address.
Secondly, there will be more bank transactions than any normal days, so that you have no idea one or two of them are fraudulent. Reportedly, there are so many victims of scamming at Christmas.
Here is what you need to be alerted of to prevent you from being scammed on the holiday season:
- No matter how busy or in rush you are, take some time to carefully check what’s wrong with your package delivery once an issue occurred. Also, don’t give out your password to someone over the phone.
- Suspicious emails and phone calls for charity purposes
- Fake emails or websites from popular brands and stores. If there’s an attached link, don’t immediately click it. Check whether it’s a scam or not by opening a new window and put in the store’s or brand’s real website.
- A link offering a great deal that highly interests you. You may want to click on the link but take a minute or two to verify the source.
Besides getting alerted of those four sources, use these five tips here to avoid scams at Christmas:
- If it’s possible, turn on alert from your bank account or card issuer. Whenever strange activities related to your bank account and card happen, you will get informed and alerted.
- Take your time to regularly check your account to ensure the genuine purchasing you have done. Usually, when you shop a lot, you will forget easily about the history of shopping transactions.
- Check your privacy settings on the platforms you’re registered in to ensure that you share payment information you intently want to share.
- If it’s possible, better use card for major purchases than pay from a bank account. The protection on card purchases is better than on bank account, somehow.
- Don’t believe someone who calls and asks for your card or bank account details. Scams often happen over the phone and many people fall for the trick
