Reminder: Stop Sharing Your Passwords To Scammers

Scammers will always come up with a variety of ways to do what they do best: to scam you. Every time the question gets asked: ‘Why do they do it?’, the answer will always be because they simply just can.

There are really what seemed to be very few things to take note of when it comes to scammers:

1. They prey on the potential victims’ sense of fear and anxiety
2. The more the scammers hook onto their anxiety, the more they become confident in proceeding with the scam.
3. There are all kinds of scams out there and they all share one common goal: To scam and be successful at it.
4. Just as there are many ways to make money and earn money through trusted sources and reliable channels, to scammers, the methods and art of scamming is the same as just making business. Except for them, it’s quick profit to swindle out of unsuspected victims.

Scammers rely more on making themselves appear more real by these few points:

1. Taking advantage of the potential victims’ fear of knowing that the scammers have the information about them and can use it against them.
2. Making potential victims believe that the scammers have the upper hand just by informing them that they have obtained personal information about them.
3. Try various ways to threaten, and intimidate their potential victims with the personal information that they claim to have of their potential victims. Their main weapon of choice: fear.

Believe it or not, when I spoke to a few friends and one of them happen to be a coach in cybercrime safety, he mentioned that while he does not blame unsuspected victims who become unfortunate to fall for these scams, the scammers do make the effort to try to emulate the ways an official officer from a bank or government agency would behave when speaking to individuals about their personal case; these scammers would try to copy 95% of those actions, behaviors and processes. In short, as he put it: Even scammers do their own research on how to scam.

So the main details they would inquire from the people they try to scam:

1. Identification number, passport number.
2. Bank account number.
3. Password.

Now, on the 3rd point, a lot of scammers use this information to ask for the person’s password after they have gone through the script of reading out lines of how to threaten and warn the person of consequences if they do not comply. At first, it sounds almost natural, the scammer would try to sound convincing enough to pose as a fake official, claiming to be representing a bank or a government office.

However, this is considered a breach of privacy and security. It is actually a crime to ask for another person’s personal details like this. No one, not even the bank or any officials, is allowed to ask for your password and especially password access to accounts that store your money if it’s in an online banking site or any personal information for that matter.

You can choose to pick up a call from a scammer, I know some people do that purely for fun and amusement and result in hilarity, but here are ways to confirm that it is definitely a scammer or a fraud:

They use their personal mobile number to call you. When you do pick it up, it goes to an automated voice message claiming that you have an x-certain amount of money in debt.

When this does happen, ask yourself this or do these:

• Think back if you really do have debts with the said agency or office in the first place.
• Do you have a record at all proven for the claim?
• If this really is from LHDN, would they really use a personal phone number to call you?
• Make extra verifications on the claims that are being used against you. It’s always better to be safe than never.

One of the important questions to really ask: Do they have the right to have access to your personal account and records, including and especially your password?

If the answer is no, then you have successfully beaten the scammer or fraud at their own game.

Remember, anyone ever asking you to hand over personal information such as password to your personal banking account or even your Netflix login is considered a breach of privacy.

So the next time a scammer or a fraud calls you and demands for your password, hang up and then have a good day.

Jasmine RCK is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav.

Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!

Newswav is solely an aggregation platform and hosts the content. The views expressed and content above including media (pictures, videos, etc) were provided by the author. If you have any questions about the content, copyright or other issues of the work, please contact Newswav.