I thank God weekly that i rarely get scammer calls. I've had my cell phone #..........27 years. I'm not bragging. Honestly, I'm wondering what MY secret is?
Not surfing on shady sites, refraining to enter all your personal information on unsecured ones... (still doesn't prevent that costumer databases get sold or stolen by hackers...)
Smartphones are very vulnerable these days, receive a text or email like "parcel carrier XYZ has problems with a shipment for you, follow <link inserted> to correct/confirm..."
Open that link and your phone is infected with malware, collecting and uploading your bank-data, contact info, etc... simple to clone it then...
I guess I'm one of the few paranoid enough to:
- have solid security/anti-virus/browser protection software on my phone (bundle for PCs + phones... even running one on my smart TV...)
- refuse to have any banking app on it (despite banks urging all & everyone to use it); computer only, with cardTAN unit... screw convenience, I want security...
- refuse to run over the ISP's modem to begin with; their WiFi gets disabled upon first startup, patch/NAT-ting to my firewall router, static IP's on my intranet...
New trend are spoofed sales adds on Amazon, eBay and similar platforms...
Yes, the goods do exist, but on another seller's account, so they take your payment, order at the real seller with your data, get away with your cash and leave you with the original money demand...
Fake police calls to elderly people... your grand/son/daughter has been in serious accident, needs XXX-thousands for hospital/bail, we send officers to collect...
There already cases where AI fakes the voice of family members, voice samples are readily avail on social media... best to agree on a secret secure word or phrase for such cases...