Depending on your upbringing, a phone call might seem normal…or alarming overkill. But regardless of when or where you were born, one current universal truth exists: Companies will not call you and ask for your account information or personal information.
Disguised under “confirming” your details, fraudsters use this tactic to scam you and gain unauthorized access to your account. The phone calls might sound legitimate, especially with the rapid improvement and accessibility of generative AI tools. But these days, they’re almost always sketchy.
So if your caller ID says a company is ringing you, let them roll to voicemail. (Caller ID can be spoofed, aka faked). If you accidentally pick up, tell them you’re busy and will call back later. Then use contact info you found yourself (like through your online account, a printed statement, or the company’s official website) to get in touch about the issue. Even if the message is about a fraud alert, still verify the situation on your own—fraud alert scams are very common.
Of course, phone calls aren’t the only way scammers try to reach you. Scammers can still target you through text or email. Use the same playbook here, too: Don’t click any links in the messages. Instead, open a separate tab, navigate to the official website, and log in to see what’s going on.
Scams work because you should pay attention to fraud warnings and other unexpected messages about your accounts. The trick is to keep paying attention—but be smart about how you handle your next steps. Scams are unfortunately much more common as of late, due to increasing use of AI tools by shady cybercriminals. So in the event you receive a real notification from your bank or another company, you don’t want to accidentally ignore it.