Phishing Scams

Remember when the Prince of Nigeria emailed you saying that he could use some help? That's a phishing scam. Usually, someone's trying to commit identity fraud (or just steal all your money) and needs your personal info to do that. They "phish" for it, and if you give it to them, you stand to lose a lot.

Example: Your granny gets a call from a nice young man who tells her that you have been put in jail in Hawaii, where you went on an impulse vacation. Granny knows you love her Hawaiian ribs, so she thinks it's possible that you went on vacation there. The nice man claims to be a police officer and needs Granny's account information and her account PIN to pay for your bail. Granny doesn't want you languishing in a jail far away, so she gives out all the information her asks for.

A week later, granny's account is cleaned out. Poor Granny. Or through another lens:

You know when you’re out on the lake with Dad, just the two of you, trying to haul in some trout, when one of the fish pulls a fast one on you, and hangs one of these things on your line?

Yeah. Total scam. We’re tellin’ ya - you can not trust anything that breathes through the side of its face. Okay, so that’s, uh, not quite a phishing scam. Although the general idea is similar. It’s someone trying to make you believe something that...isn’t exactly true.

With a phishing scam, the venue switches from the great outdoors, to cyberspace. Ever gotten an email from a Nigerian prince who’s temporarily down on his luck and if you’ll just send him $300 cash, immeasurable riches await you? Sound a little too good to be true, yeah?

It is. Usually, that Nigerian prince is an overweight, balding guy named Jerry living in his mom’s basement in a suburb outside of Cleveland. He’d love nothing more than to hook a sucker, i.e. you--and take that 300 bucks off your hands. But many times, the scam is more intricate than that. Often it’s identity thieves who are trying to con you into releasing private information, such as your social security number or credit card information.

They might try to convince you that they’re Amazon support, or your bank, or your long-lost Uncle Yusef who just needs a few personal details before he can FedEx you your large inheritance. Don’t fall for any of it. Any time you’re randomly asked to divulge any sensitive info, or pop a wad of cash into an envelope stop for a second and ask yourself whether you might be, well, a fish.

And then ask yourself whether you’d like all your hard-earned money to be sauteed or flame-broiled.