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Internet safety
Course: Internet safety > Unit 1
Lesson 8: Ask Google: How can I recognize online scams?What are common scams I should be aware of?
Learn how to recognize and avoid some common types of scams.
To learn more about how you can keep yourself safe while on the Internet, visit: internet-safety.khanacademy.org. Created by Sal Khan.
Want to join the conversation?
- How do you know if this scammer or someone else is pretending to be someone close to you?(3 votes)
- If they ask for a super specific amount, or use terms of endearment that they don't usually use.
Hope this helps!(2 votes)
- What are common scams I should be aware of? Write simple and vote(3 votes)
- There are often like somebody that you know is sick=send money, or You are been hacked=change your password, etc. If you want more information from me, just write my name and what you wanna know. I will be waiting for your reply.(2 votes)
- internet-safety.khanacademy.org
Is this legit or a test / fake website? I'm not clicking the link don't wanna go to it till I get proof. I feel like this is a link for testing people's skills to see if they click it.(3 votes)- This is not a fake website. I learn a lot from this.(1 vote)
- what if i shut down a intire scammer company(2 votes)
- If you shut down the scamming system more scammers will come.(2 votes)
- Wow, no one commented.(1 vote)
- Sometimes a scammer pretends that ur money is in danger of being scammed, then they ask for ur money accounts and pretend to 'help' when they actually are stealing it money.(3 votes)
Video transcript
- So Grace, you know, and I'm asking both to protect all of us but also I have a strange
fascination of, of exotic scams. What, what are the types
of scams that you've seen? How, how elaborate have,
have these things become? - Yeah, so unfortunately the attackers are getting more creative. Now, the good news is that most major, you know,
email platforms for example are automatically blocking
all kinds of spam that, or scams and spam that you
never see on a regular basis. For example, during the Covid Pandemic, Google blocked 18 million
Covid impersonation emails per day. And that is something that never made it to people's inboxes. - What is a Covid impersonation email? - So unfortunately, one
thing to look out for with these scams is folks impersonating what you might think
of as a trusted source. So maybe a hospital or health organization reaching out with Covid information, kind of trying to beat people
in with something timely. So we do really recommend that folks go directly to the trusted
website of that organization as opposed to clicking into a link that may look a little bit suspicious or may not be something
they were expected to hear. Another flag is if a
email or a call or a text is really trying to rush you into providing personal information, such as your bank account information, your password, or otherwise. So we, we were seeing trends of attempts to kind of reach out and say, help now or please send money here. We, we are also seeing
impersonation attempts around special offers. So, you know, if it
looks too good to be true it probably is, if you're
being offered free items that are high monetary value, but you're being asked
to immediately, you know, put your credit card information down and that's definitely another
red flag to look out for. - Wow. It, it is a dangerous world but I'm glad there are
folks like you who are, are helping keep dragging. It feels like it's a
never ending arms race so we have to stay vigilant. - Definitely. I think
that's our biggest tip is to be proactive and definitely take a bit before clicking
on something suspicious and, and, and verify, you know if there's a, you receive something you think it looks like
it's from someone you know or something you're familiar with, go ahead and find another way to confirm that that's actually the case. - And always check the link
you're about to click on and before you type in a password, think three times are my takeaways. And two step verification. - Absolutely. - Thanks so much, Grace,
that was really useful. - Thank you Sal.