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Are you spending a lot of time worrying about online scams? That’s a very understandable reaction to online life. However, you can worry less by taking a few simple steps.
Understand How Scams Work
If you understand something that worries or concerns you, you’ll spend less time thinking about it. It’s easy to fear something that you hear a lot about but don’t necessarily understand. So do a little homework. If you understand how the disaster relief scam, the make money at home scam, or the SIM-swapping scam work, you’ll understand how to avoid them and thus worry less about them.
Have a Backup Plan
Make a list of the things that are of concern to you, such as your social media account being hacked, bait and switch when buying online, getting your credit card information skimmed – you get the idea. Before any of these may things happen, come up with a backup plan. You’ll worry less about anything untoward happening because you’ll know if it does, you’ve already thought about solving the problem.
Some examples of great backup plans: - You can use Facebook’s account-recovery tools to get your account back. - You can initiate returns if you bought through a reputable website. - You can keep a credit card with a low balance limit you just use for online purchases, then cancel it without worry if you find out it’s been compromised.
Cut Down on Exposure
One way to worry less about online scams is to cut down on your online footprint, thus giving scammers fewer ways to scam you. Delete all your old accounts and profiles you no longer use. Then delete the ones you use only a little and can live without. Make a short list of sites where you’re willing to have an account with an attached credit card and use guest checkout for everything else. Unsubscribe from as many useless emails as possible. Reduce your social media habit. Go through your security settings for every single account you have and turn your privacy settings to their highest possible level.
Institute Basic Protections
Make strong passwords and use them. Enable two-factor authentication when possible. Secure your router. Use a password manager. You can make a project of it and cross all these items off your to-do list in an afternoon, thus reducing any worry.
Talk to Friends & Family
Many of us know we’ve been scammed at some point—and when you add that number to the people who won’t admit they’ve been scammed or still don’t know about it, we suspect that actually most of us have been scammed. Being scammed can be embarrassing, so we don’t talk about it – so it’s time to start talking about it. By opening up a dialogue with friends and family about times we’ve been scammed (or even unsuccessful attempts), we’ll all gain a better understanding of how we can be targeted and how to protect ourselves.
