Tips to stay safe from financial scams

It seems like every day there's a new warning about financial scams circulating, with the scammers getting more and more creative. Many people think that it could never happen to them, and then they find themselves on the phone with their bank trying to recoup their losses.

On the latest episode of PennyWise, host Nat Cardona is joined by Kimberly Palmer of NerdWallet with tips on how to avoid falling for common scams and what to do in case you do.

Read more on NerdWallet here!

About this program

Nat Cardona is host of PennyWise as well as Lee Enterprise's true-crime podcast Late Edition: Crime Beat Chronicles. Lee Enterprises produces many national, regional and sports podcasts. Learn more here.

Episode transcript

Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:

Welcome to Pennywise a Lee Enterprises podcast. I'm your host, Nat Cardona. 
One of the biggest mistakes when it comes to protecting yourself from financial scams is thinking you're too smart to be duped by one. It can literally happen to anyone, regardless of age or circumstance. I mean, come on. There are a lot of sophisticated scams out there. But thankfully, Nerdwallet personal finance writer Kimberly Palmer joins us today with a few key strategies to help keep you safe.

Man, those scammers are really sneaky out there. Let's talk about that. If you get a call from your bank, probably not legit. Let's go into that.

Exactly. One of the most common scams out there is your bank or some kind of financial institution calling you. But it's not really your bank. It's someone. It's a scam artist, essentially impersonating your bank. And because they can be so convincing, they actually convince people who have picked up the phone to share their personal information, share things like passwords, Social Security numbers, all kinds of personal details that they then use to steal your money or steal your identity.

And so you want to be so careful whenever you get a phone call from anyone or a text message or an email you want to verify who it is. So actually, even though it feels rude, you want to say, I'm going to hang up and call my bank myself, and then you get the verified number on the back of your bank card or wherever you have it and call yourself.

And that's the only way to really know who you're talking to.

Right. And just for clarity sake. Scammers can spoof numbers. I've had this happen personally where it says your banking institution, it's the exact same number, whatever, one 800 number calling you. But again, it's you should call that not the other way around.

Exactly. I'm so glad you mentioned that, because it can be so convincing. And also, when you get that call, they are often the most pleasant kind of sounding customer service reps you've ever spoken to. But it's all a scam. Just trying to get to trying to trick you.

Right. Right. And a lot of that comes back to general security practices, especially when you're banking online and on your phone and all of that jazz. Any tips there?

The most important thing is just to make sure that you are constantly monitoring your own accounts, because often the first sign of a scam is even a really small deduction, like a $5 deduction that you don't recognize. And it's a way for the scam artists to really test if they can go bigger and subtract more money from your account.

So you want to be regularly reviewing your credit card statements, your banking statements, most importantly, to look for anything you don't recognize. And if there is something that seems out of place, you want to call and investigate because then you can shut down. If there is a scam starting to take place, you can shut that down. And then also you want to just be sure that you have strong passwords across all your accounts.

Set up two factor authentication so a person can't log in with only the password but needs to get that code. Also texted or emailed to you as well just to make sure all those accounts are safe.

Yeah, I 100% agree with that. That two factor authentication authentication is just that has changed my life and given me such a peace of mind just because there's so many goofy things that people are trying to get at us. Let's go into that. The common scams that might come your way. Aside from the banking one that we mentioned, anything you want to add there?

It's really helpful, I think, to know what those co