By David Pyrdol
With computers, one of the tools for communication, the risk of getting scammed online is growing.
One study by the Pew Research Center found that most Americans experienced an online scam or attack attempt.
Online scams have led to crimes such as credit card fraud and other stolen personal information, the study found.
Morgan Machado, a Stonehill student, said online scammers can be creative.
“Online scams are a creative way into tricking people to give up money or personal information,” said Machado.
Scott Hamlin, director of educational technology at Stonehill, said that personal accounts are the scammer’s targets.
“One of the primary pieces of information that they want to get from you is your account information for getting money,” Hamlin said.
Some scams, particularly those coming into email boxes, are designed to look like a well-known company or even a person you know.
“Most commonly either like posing as someone that they know, or a company, or giving up some sort of information that they already know to try to trick them,” said Abby Sanwald, a Stonehill student.
Ryan Miranda, senior user support specialist at Stonehill, said no one is immune to scammers online.
“All age groups are equally vulnerable to phishing attack scams. They will try to target their scam on a certain age group,” Miranda said.
A study by the Pew Research Center found that about 73% of adults in the U.S. have experienced an online scam, including fake advertisements, fraud, amongst others.
Hamlin said that scammers can use fake email addresses that resemble existing brands or companies.
“They will use an email address that looks like Microsoft.com, but it’ll be like ‘microsift.com’,” Hamlin said.
If you see a scam email, don’t respond to them and delete the message.
“If they’re asking me for certain stuff, or someone that you don’t recognize, don’t answer them and just delete the message,” said Liana Randall, a Stonehill student.
Miranda said that AI, but mostly misspelled words, are common things to look for in an online scam.
“AI is helping the scammer scam, but commonalities, historically, are bad spelling of grammar,” Miranda said.
Sanwald, the Stonehill student, said she found that emails into the Stonehill account are most likely to be scams if they are from external sources.
“The main key sign comes from an external source. Make sure you delete that and not click on certain external links,” Sanwald said.
Machado said that her friend got scammed and her social media accounts were taken over.
“A very close friend of mine got scammed by someone asking her for personal information to log back into an account, and she gave up her information, and they were able to take over a lot of her social media platforms and post off of them,” Machado said.
Randall said that she paid for her concert tickets twice after it prompted her with an error.
“It went to a different page automatically, and it was saying like “error, this is blocked”, and then when I went to try to buy the tickets, it had already went through, and it took my money twice,” Randall said.
References:
Online Scam Study:
Stonehill College Students Interviewed:
Morgan Machado
Liana Randall
Abby Sanwald
Stonehill College Experts Interviewed:
Scott Hamlin
Ryan Miranda
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