Scary reason why you should never answer if someone asks ‘can you hear me' on the phone
Among all the phone scams and phishing emails we have to dodge like a daily obstacle course, sometimes you can turn the tables and have a little fun with them.
There are countless YouTube videos of people scamming the scammers giving them a taste of their own medicine.
However, there's one scam that could end up costing you dearly.
Instead of a spiel that revolves around trying to get access to your credit card information, this one is a lot more subtle.
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Simply being asked 'Can you hear me?' on the phone could leave you with an empty wallet.
This red flag moment is designed to use humans' instinctive nature to say 'yes'.
'This phone scam is particularly frightening [because] they simply rely on the human behavior of answering a quick question,' said Matthew Shirley, director of offensive cybersecurity operations at Fortalice.
Originally circulating in the United States and Canada in 2017, the scam also known as the 'Say "Yes" Scam', has encountered by people as late as 2020.
Scammers record the victim's innocent response of 'yes' and subsequently use it to make unauthorised purchases in the victim's name or changes to their account information.
'You say 'yes,' it gets recorded and they say that you have agreed to something. I know that people think it's impolite to hang up, but it's a good strategy,' added Susan Grant, director of consumer protection for the Consumer Federation of America.
According to a Reader's Digest report, phone call scams have increased by 118% in the last year.
So, you can never be too safe when it comes to cybersecurity. In most cases, it's so important to do your due diligence and fact-check to avoid falling for the ploy.
Adam Gordon, an instructor at ITProTV, said that phone scams are 'designed to do two things: gain information about you that can be used to impersonate you [through] identity theft, and get you to give money to the scammer.'
One iPhone owner who was bombarded with Apple notifications to change his account password strategically exposed a scammer, after discovering they had a lot of personal information stored on him from People Data Labs.
However, after getting every bit of detail correct except for his name, the gig was soon up and the victim shared his story on X to warn others of a similar scam.