Scammers send emails or SMS that appear to be from your bank or another online service, and ask you to verify your details on a fake version of their website. A fraudster tries to exploit your emotions and get close to you before they ask you for money or your personal details. You receive an email, text, or DM telling you you’ve won a prize in some competition or lottery you never entered. A scammer takes your money and you receive a faulty product or nothing at all. Scams can come in countless forms, but here are a few common ones: While this kind of getting-to-know-you details might not seem as risky as divulging passwords, fraudsters can use a child’s personal information to open online accounts, apply for credit cards and loans, and much more.īefore you talk about the signs of a scam, it’s a good idea to go over the typical methods and schemes used by swindlers. A child might think nothing of revealing their full name, date of birth, or address to someone they’ve met on social media or while gaming. Scammers often take advantage of a child’s naivety when it comes to sharing personal information. Before getting the facts, assure them that they’ve done nothing wrong and they made the right decision in coming to you. If your child tells you about a scam they may have seen or even fallen for, try not to get angry as this may put them off from coming to you again. But, by teaching them how to identify and avoid online scams, you can empower them to navigate their online world safely.Įstablishing a calm environment where your child feels listened to will allow them to open up about what’s happening in their online life. We can’t always be around to protect our children, especially in cyberspace. With children worldwide spending more time than ever on social media – our 2023 data report showed that they spent 112 minutes, 74 minutes, and 63 minutes daily on TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram respectively – it’s inevitable that they’ll encounter a scam at some point. The marketing tools offered by social media platforms make it easy, and cheap, for scammers to create bogus advertisements and target victims based on personal details, like age, interests, and past purchases. The most frequently reported scam in the first half of 2023 was from people paying for goods advertised on social media only for them never to show up.

Crafty scammers can even tailor their schemes based on an individual’s interests and the kind of content they post.Ī scammer might not necessarily slide into your DMs either. Instagram and other social media platforms are attractive to scammers because they allow them to create a fake persona, or hack into someone’s profile and pretend to be them. The report points out that the vast majority of frauds go unreported, so the actual figure is likely to be much higher. During the same period, reported losses to scams on social media hit $2.7 billion – far higher than any other method of contact. A 2023 report by the United States Federal Trade Commission showed that one in four people who reported losing money to fraud since 2021 said it happened on social media.

Qustodio parental control reviews 2017