A couple weeks ago, I almost-not-really got scammed.
A man called me from Capital One’s fraud department to confirm that I had not, in fact, made some purchases. (No, I didn’t buy anything from Turkish Air…but that does sound kinda fun, now that you mention it.)
My guard went up pretty quickly because I’m aware (because of both my age and my profession) that scammers try to get personal information from you on the phone in this way. But it was only mildly up, so I spoke with the man for a few minutes, getting increasingly anxious. He pushed on, quashing any minor protestations of suspicion. When he finally asked me to go get my credit card so I could give him a piece of information from it, I knew it was a scam and said I’d be hanging up now. He abruptly did the honors himself.
It rattled me. Why did I spend any time on the phone with this man? I know the rules: Financial institutions (banks, credit card companies, brokerage houses, Social Security, the IRS, and on and on) will never call you and ask for information. And yet I, a cognitively healthy, informed person had not just immediately hung up. I had spent several minutes actively trying to figure out if it was a scam or not. The longer I’m on the phone, the more vulnerable I am.
If I didn’t recognize it immediately as a scam, what did this mean for my older loved ones? I mean, my parents and my aunt are all in their 80s and really healthy…but they’re still in their 80s and stuff just slows down. (Hey, Mom and Dad…wassup. Erm…you’re still great, even with your 80-year-old brains.)
This started me thinking about “What advice can I give them that is extremely easy and simple to execute that won’t require any judgement in the moment?”
I settled on advising them to say this every time a financial institution calls: “Where are you calling from? Thank you. I’m going to hang up and call back.”
Then go find the institution’s phone number (from a statement, the back of the credit card, or by typing in the URL of the website itself and finding it on the website; you can’t just search for the website because scammers can manipulate search results) and call the institution yourself. I also told my loved ones, “And you can always call me if you have any questions about what’s going on or what you should do.”
I shared these thoughts on LinkedIn, and it clearly hit a nerve. Many people reposted it. Many people shared their concerns about their own loved ones being scammed.
But what got me is that many people also shared other advice for how to deal with this situation differently or how to deal with other situations (An email! Malware on your computer! Someone at the front door!). A friend also observed that her mother would never use the script I suggested because she’d consider it rude and the mother was raised to avoid being rude at all costs.
So, while clearly people liked my specific advice, it also clearly wasn’t sufficient. But I remain committed to the idea that, whatever the solution is, it has to be simple, easy, one-size-fits-almost-all-situations, and reflexive. We can’t expect anyone to be making judgments in the moment about whether it’s a scam or not.