I’ve lived through a Scam Call Nightmare and now I know What to Do When Being Scammed–do you? I have 3 Easy Scam-Ending Tips that you’ve got to check out.
Look, its happens to the best of us. And the worst of us. Every single one of us.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock since the 1920’s, you’ve gotten a scam call. Seriously, I think the second phone call Alexander Graham Bell got was a robo-voice trying to get him to send money to a Nigerian Prince to end world hunger and donate to the local Sheriff’s department ball.
Ser. E. US. LY.
And, if you haven’t been living under that rock, chances are, you’ve answered at least one of those scam calls and been pulled in by whatever it was.
I wasn’t ready and I really thought I was. But now, I’ve got these 3 Easy Scam-Ending Tips that are perfect solutions for what to do when being scammed.
Scam Call Nightmare – What to Do When Being Scammed
Do you count how many robocalls you get a day? I did. And it was 10. ON AVERAGE.
Some days I got 15. Others I got 8. But, over a month period, I got, on average 10 robocalls a day. And, no matter how many I block, I get more and more robocalls.
What are spam calls?
If you’ve been living under that rock, this might be a surprise to you. But spam calls are unsolicited phone calls you receive, typically on your mobile phone (although, how would I know, because I haven’t had a land line in over 10 years now). And now, they’re actual computer messages trying to just get you to press one and be in a round-about circle of scam, connect you with a human, and try to get your credit card numbers–or get you to sign up for a credit card.
It’s tiring and can really be dangerous.
What was My Spam Call Nightmare?
Ok. So, I’m going to get real honest here. I am not the quickest to see the scam sometimes and I really do try to see the good in all people. But you’d think, even nice-little-ole-me would be suspicious of phone calls. But that’s not always the case.
Particularly when spam calls really started to become a thing using your area code. It was a nightmare!
Y’all, I answered what I thought was my husband’s work number, because it was the right area code and it was just one digit off. How was I supposed to know?!
They said they were my bank. And needed my information because there was a lock on my account.
I pulled myself short when they asked for my card number. There was no reason the bank would need me to pull out my bank card and give them the number–they had that!
Personally, I think hanging up is all that saved me from having my identity stolen.
How Can you Protect Yourself from Spam Calls
It was actually this incident that inspired me to figure out what you can do to protect yourself from spam calls. Here’s my 3 simple tips:
- Don’t answer if you don’t recognize the number. This is pretty straight-forward, but seriously, they’ll call back if it’s a real person. If it’s a robot, they likely won’t.
- If you do answer, if it’s a robot, hang up. Nothing legitimate comes out of a robocall. And you can tell that they’re not a real person. So, you’re not going to hurt their feelings. Just hang up.
- If someone asks for something you wouldn’t give to a stranger on the street, hang up. Look, just because someone says that they’re from your bank or your office or anything, you can’t trust that. They’re a stranger–and if you wouldn’t give a stranger on the street this information, then don’t give it to the caller. Hang up.
If in doubt, hang up.
Y’all, these are literally the rules I’m teaching my kids what to do as they start using phones in this crazy spam-call-filled world. Simple rules for a pretty awful problem.
But, the good news is, there’s help! And it’s from my favorite phone carrier, T-Mobile. Sweeeet!
What can Your Phone Carrier Do?
I don’t know what the other guys can do, but T-Mobile is here to help. With the free solutions T-Mobile offers for their customers, we can all easily end the dreaded robocalls.
T-Mobile’s network has some built-in patent-pending tech to analyze every call for spam to keep customers safe from scammers. Using advanced machine learning and AI, T-Mobile is constantly updating this network every 4-6 minutes, blocking23,000 ‘Scam Likely’ calls every minute.
This sounds crazy, but it’s so true.
T-Mobile has three big ways to help protect customers, SCAM ID that alerts when an incoming call is likely a scam; SCAM BLOCK that blocks scam calls on the network level, before they ever reach the phone; and NAME ID that allows you to block and unblock callers from your call log, reverse look up calls from unknown numbers and more.
It’s genius.
So, be sure to check out T-Mobile and their fancy-dancy customer protection for their users. It’s kind of amazing, if you ask me.