The number of phone scams has been soaring in the recent years and scammers have been taking advantages of technology to perform endless phone frauds. As stated by the Federal Communications Commission, half of the calls made in the US in 2019 will be spam calls. Revenue lost due to phone frauds in US peaked $83M in the first quarter of 2019, more then 140K reports received in 4 months according to Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Phone scam is the most common type of frauds referring to FTC and the median of reported fraud loss is $1000.
Robocalls are the most notorious spam calls nowadays. We have little control for this particular type of phone fraud, as it is generated by computers that dial high volume of random phone numbers in a short period of time. But what about other types of spam calls, like Wangiri scam, IRS scam, telemarketing calls, sweepstakes calls……? Why do these scammers call you and where is the leak? There is always something we can do to lower the chances of receiving spam calls! Lets start with protecting our personal information on the internet!
Cyber security
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon, Host Sorter, Caspar Camille Rubin and freestocks org on Unsplash
Website Encrypted
Nowadays we hand out personal information way too easily, for example we give out our personal details such as address and phone number during online shopping. We should always keep in mind that we only give personal information over encrypted website, which means the website address starts with https instead of http. Have a look at tellows website, it starts with https!
Choose the right Wireless Network
We all use WiFi having fun with our gadgets in this day and age. Encryption feature on our router can also enhance protection of the wireless network. Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) and Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) are two common types of encryption for this purpose. Check your router if the encryption feature is turned on, and if it’s not, follow the directions comes with the router and turn it on.
Free WiFi in public? Yeaaa…!? Bear in mind that no public WiFi is entirely secure, for the reason you have no idea who sets it up and who is using it, let alone who is collecting your information. Using encryption while using public WiFi is the best shot so far. As a reminder, always use secured Public WiFi when having a choice, this type of free WiFi requires users to agree legal terms, registration or login. We strongly advice you do not use unsecured public WiFi. Also, turn off automatic connectivity for your gadgets and monitor Bluetooth connectivity no matter you are using secured or unsecured WiFi. For more information please visit the FTC website about wireless internet protection.
Privacy settings
Pay attention when accepting term of use while registering on websites, downloading and signing up apps. Companies will state the use of the information collected from your account. Read carefully before clicking I ACCEPT, this is because companies also share or trade call lists for marketing purposes, which is the telemarketing calls you receive. If you want to know what kind of information your apps or websites are collecting, look for the privacy settings and see if they offer “Opt- out” option of data collection.
If you are bothered by nuisance calls at the moment and you need a solution desperately, let’s check out the tellows app! It supports both Android and iOS system, offers caller ID and blocks unwanted calls, you can create your own blacklist and rate dubious number immediately using our app!
tellows hope you enjoy the article! If you would like to get to know more about us, here is the chance – we recently joined Medium, a vivid online publish platform. We already released our first article – Why tellows Is The Right Solution to Telephone Scams! Share your latest experience of spam call on tellows.com, and don’t forget to register to become a part of the tellows community! To know more benefits of becoming a registered user, please visit the tellows blog. We look forward to hearing from you, no matter the good or the bad! Please leave a comment below or follow us on Facebook and twitter.
Your tellows team;-)
