Did You Hear ‘You Are a Winner’ Recently? It Could Be A Scam!

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You Are a Winner

Did You Hear ‘You Are a Winner’ Recently? It Could Be A Scam!:

Frauds happen very frequently all around the world and those over the internet and by the means of phone calls are some of the most often encountered ones. In both cases, the victims are tricked with various justifications to offer personal and financial information to the delinquents. Whether they pretend to be coming from banks or other institutions both email and phone scams have the advantages of easily stealing information and money under the protection of anonymity.

One particular type of phone fraud is the one saying that you are a winner for various contests and that you must provide information in order to get in the possession of the prize. There are a few basic facts that one should keep in mind in order to avoid being a victim of such scams and to help to the fight against frauds.

- Recognize the ‘You are a winner’ scams
Usually, when you are called by one of the people who do these scams, you are told that your number was randomly selected out of many phone numbers and you won a prize. All that you have to do at this point is to provide the operator calling with the information that the ‘company’ that offers the prize needs in order to send you the prize. The scammers usually not only ask for addresses but for financial data as well because ‘you have to pay the delivery tax in order to receive your prize’. Even if you may be inattentive, it is actually easy to know that you confront with a scammer just by remembering that no institution will ever ask for personal and financial data over the phone.

- Report these types of frauds
Even if your first reaction when it comes to ‘You are a winner’ fraud would be to end the call, reporting is more helpful than that. You should simply play the role of a victim and trick the scammer by saying that you don’t currently remember the information but that you will call back. The next step would be for you to report the numbers that were used to call you to the FTC, thus acting against phone fraud.