How often do you get calls that you do not know the number to? There has been an increase of these calls that imitate numbers that you may possibly know. I know that I have at least two to three unknown numbers that come through. The worst is when they are a scam trying to make you believe in something that is not true. The other day, they called me and tried to convince me that my car insurance was expired. The crazy thing is that there are so many scams out there that it’s hard to protect yourself.
What type of calls do you get?
Student loan calls, Health Insurance, IRS, Family in trouble, Technical Support, Fake Insurance, Lottery Scams, Law Enforcement are all real scam or spam calls that you could get. These are not even all of them either. Just know that if you get one, DO NOT give them any personal information.
How Can I Tell if it is a Scam/Spam Call?
Salt Lake County Officials are saying “We want to remind the public that police agencies will NEVER call demanding payment in the form of cash, prepaid debit card, or gift card for warrants, missed court dates, or failure to report for jury duty”. Usually with these calls they always demand money right away. Like I said before, DO NOT give them any personal information including your bank account or card number. Sometimes they can know quite a bit of information on their own but do not give them more.
How to Protect Yourself
There are many things that are being put in place to protect everyone. One thing you can do is to make sure to turn your phone off at least once a day to prevent any hackers from getting more information.
Another thing you can try is downloading some apps to help filter some of the scams. Depending on what your cell phone provider is, there are different apps to help.
For T-Mobile, use the app called Scam Shield. It has cool things where it will show you how many times it has blocked calls for you and will hold it for about a month. For Sprint users that are not T-Mobile yet, the app is called Sprint Call Screener. This one just blocks calls that could possibly be scammers. For AT&T it is called AT&T protect. This does the same thing where it will just block numbers that look suspicious. And For Verizon, it is called Verizon Call Filter.
Another way to help filter these unwanted calls is to go into the settings of your smartphone. On an Android device go to more options, settings, spam and call screen. Then turn on See Caller & Spam ID. Last thing to do is to turn on the Filter suspected spam calls. On an iPhone, open the Settings app, scroll down to Phone, then select Silence Unknown Callers and make sure the feature is turned on.
There is a ridiculous amount of scam and spam calls. Hopefully this was good information for you. Now that you know different ones and how to protect yourself, you can feel more comfortable with answering your phone. If you do answer the phone and a scam/spammer got through all the preventive measures, just hang up.
Thank you for reading and if you are having any problems with your phone or tech devices, please feel free to reach out to us at TickTockTech.com. We provide excellent work and free estimates. Have a wonderful day!
