Are You Being 'Spoofed'? This Specific Type Of Scam Is Hard To Catch.

Scammers win when they trick you into divulging personal information ― and one of the simplest ways they can get you to do this is by impersonating someone you know.

When a bad actor pretends to be someone you trust or a legitimate retailer, this type of scam is known as “spoofing.” With spoofing, scammers take advantage of “the fear and the curiosity that we have that this is somebody we know,” said Amy Nofziger, the director of victim support for the AARP Fraud Watch Network.

One common tactic in a spoofing scam is to make an email address, text message, website or phone number appear like it’s the real deal. But even though it might have a similar or exact same display name, domain address or use the same call-to-action button as a trusted business, politician or boss, it’s actually all a deceptive act to convince you into downloading malware or giving up your financial information.

Often, the trickery can only be revealed through minor details. Here are some of the most common ways you will encounter spoofing and what to watch out for:

Phone Spoofing

Phone spoofing can be hard to spot because there are apps that can replicate caller IDs so that they can carry the display name of people you know, as well as the local area codes that you are familiar with.

Don’t trust what you hear, either. In a 2023 “60 Minutes” segment, an ethical hacker used an app to create an AI-generated recording that mimicked the voice of one of the show’s correspondents. Through this eerie likeness, the hacker was able to successfully ask a colleague to share that correspondent’s passport number in a phone call.

In these cases, “the best thing you could do is say, ‘I gotta call you right back,’ even if it’s just one minute,” said Cliff