#like op said theyll manipulate you into thinking its real and then theyll threaten you

[arosebyan0thername]

BTW if someone calls you and says they're so-and-so from a trusted source and that you need to give them ANY personal information at all, let alone things like social security number or bank info, YOU should hang up and call THEIR institution/company/whatever back.

Find the actual number, go into your insurance or bank's app, go to their website, go to the DMV or FBI or whatever's website, and call that number. Tell them you received a call from them asking for your SSN or saying you've committed tax fraud and need to give them your bank account info Right Now or you'll go to jail. Let them know you weren't certain about the legitimacy and wanted to verify.

You will never ever get in trouble with a legitimate organization for telling them "hang on, I'm a little uncertain so I'm going to hang up and call right back," or if you're worried about confrontation, you can even say your phone is dying and you'll have to call from another phone or something. You Will Not get in trouble for that if it's a real call. But generally you'll do that and the legitimate organization will look up your info and say that whatever that caller said is not true and they were a scam.

This is also true at your place of work; if someone says they're calling from corporate and you need to go ring some transactions or load some gift cards or whatever NOW or you'll be fired, 1) that will never under any circumstances actually be legitimate no matter what, but 2) you can say "I'm not comfortable with this. I'm going to call [home office/loss prevention/wherever they said they're calling from] back and start from there."

And then you hang up and either go find that corporate number through your company resources, call them (it'll usually be loss prevention you want to contact) and explain what happened, or, better yet, just immediately notify your manager.

The person on that initial call may try to threaten you, they might tell you that they will take action against you such as cutting your hours, docking your pay, writing you up, or even firing you. Remember, they cannot do any of those things because this will never be a legitimate call, but also if you are still worried, you will have a strong case with either HR, LP, or, if nothing else, an attorney, to get whatever that corrective action was repealed, because you are doing your job to ensure your company is not being scammed.

And this isn't about saving a corporation, this is purely about saving your own ass, because if you do go through with a scam call, then you Will face corrective action.

Something to watch for, which I learned from stage magic but which is extremely relevant to detecting scams as well:

The magician or scammer will *tell you* how he is going to prove his honesty.

The magician rifles through the deck until you say "stop", then he says, "Are you sure? I'll keep going if you want." and asks "Now, you agree that you could have stopped anywhere you wanted, so there's absolutely no way I could know which card you got" and because it's a magic show and you aren't paying close attention you didn't notice he didn't deal a card from where you stopped, he dealt the bottom card of the deck.

The magician doesn't ask you, "What would it take for you to believe this" because you might say, "I'd need you to use a sealed deck" or "I'd have to personally shuffle the deck" or some other proof that would make the trick impossible.

Magicians say "You agree that if I did *this*, it would mean *that*, right?" and you say yes, and it feels like you are the one who got to verify things, but of course the magician is lying and the proof is nothing of the kind.

Scammers do the same thing. A really concrete example is phone scammers pretending to be working for the government will say, "Look, I see you're skeptical if I'm who I say I am, I'm going to hang up and call back, and you'll see on the caller ID it says, 'FBI' and that tells you that I'm really working for the government."

Now, caller ID can be spoofed pretty easily, so it doesn't prove anything at all.

But it *feels* to you like you demanded proof and the scammer was willing to give you the proof.

But you didn't tell the scammer what out would take to prove it to you, the scammer told you what the proof would be.

This is actually like a really basic thing to look for if you want to start decoding magic tricks and scams.