One of the most important parts of my job is making sure you know what criminals and cybercreeps are up to. Enough people fall for this junk — I don’t want you to be a victim, too.
The FBI is warning about tech support scams that robbed folks of a whopping $542 million in just the first half of 2023. It all starts with a notification that looks like it’s from your bank or even the government warning of a computer hack. You guessed it. They’re fake.
‘Trust me, I’m here to help’
The bad guys are running what’s known as “phantom hacker” scams. The target? Often older adults. The aim? To get them to empty their bank accounts. It’s a wicked twist on a tech support scam that’s been around for a while, where you get a pop-up warning your machine has been hacked.
Scammers are no longer just pretending to be tech support agents. They’re impersonating bank officials or government agents to gain your trust.
It goes like this
You get a call from someone who supposedly works for your bank. They claim a hacker from a foreign country is all over your account. Yikes! Then they say, “Hey, move your money to this ‘safe’ government account.” But — spoiler alert — it’s the scammer’s account.
Just how successful is this scam? The FBI has reported 19,000 complaints related to tech support scams in just the first half of the year — amounting to that $542 million I mentioned before. Almost half of those victims were over 60.
So, what can you do? Here’s your action plan:
- Stay skeptical: If you get an unexpected email, text or pop-up warning about a computer breach, take a deep breath. It’s probably a scam.
- Check the source: Verify the message with the bank or agency directly before acting. Use a known phone number or website, not what’s given in the suspicious message.
- Never wire money: The U.S. government won’t ask you to wire money to foreign accounts or buy gift cards. That’s a scammer move every time.
👉 One final step: Let the FBI know if you’ve been duped. File a report here. If it happened to you, it happened to someone else. The more info the good guys have to go on, the more likely they are to catch the bad guys. I spoke with the head of the FBI and he assured me they read every complaint.