Call Scams to look out for during the Election Season
Election season is here once more and with the rise of the campaign trail for politicians, there are scammers who are lurking around. Here are some of the call scams and digital scams that you should look out for during the election season!
As we all know, the campaign period is the nosiest and most active time where everybody who wants to a seat whether in congress, the local municipality or even the Senate all vie for attention and also votes. This is also the time when everything seems to be bustling and busy; TVs and radios are filled with campaign jingles and festive imagery but that’s one element that scammers often use to their advantage.
- Call Scams
Calling scams are the most common types of scams and usually adapts to the climate and popular trends. Most of them still follow the same schtick, duping people to believe that something has happened or informing them that they need to give a specific amount of money to claim rewards that they supposedly won. For the election period, these call scams will follow the same beat but will often times use a politician or a political party’s name to trick hapless individuals from their money. In darker scenarios, a threat can also be made via phone calls or text messages forcing people to vote this individual or that. In other cases, they will just use government networks to endorse or campaign for a political party. Of course this can be easily taken care of with the help of Whoscall who monitors incoming calls and notifies you whether or not this is a spam call or a real business or personal call.
- Phishing Sites
Phishing sites are also more prevalent during this time. Phishing is a type of social engineering attack often used to steal user data, including login credentials and credit card numbers. It occurs when an attacker, masquerading as a trusted entity, dupes a victim into opening an email, instant message, or text message. With the dawn of social media and the prevalence of social network sites like Facebook, X, Instagram and Tiktok, there are now a lot of different ways for scammers to get a hold of your identity and sometimes they are not even after your money. They are after your identity and the access to your private information. These sensitive information can be sold for a high price to advertisers who add your details to their list of potential targets for selling goods or services. So always be careful when signing up for something online because you may not know that the site your are giving your information to is actually a phishing scam site cleverly disguised as a real and official website.
- Viber Groups
Yes even Viber and similar sites have also become a hive for scammers. It’s so easy to create a group and brand it as something that’s for fans and followers of a specific politician only for it to spam the messages with constant scam links or links designed to capture your information. So please be skeptical when it comes to joining these groups because they might be wolves in sheep’s clothing, waiting to pounce on your, your private data like passwords and identity when you are not looking. Or better yet, avoid joining these groups as much as possible. When you are prompted to join a group for faster communication, be always wary or go and install apps like Whoscall to help you check whether the link you are about to click is a scam or not.
Visit the Whoscall website to learn more and download the app for free on Google Play Store!
