online scams
How to Tell If a Direct Message Is a Scam Before You Click Anything
You get a DM from a friend’s account asking if you got the money they sent, or a message from “support” saying your account will be suspended in 24 hours. Your stomach drops a little, and your thumb is already moving toward the reply box. That split second, the one between seeing the message and […]
How to Spot a Fake Login Page Before You Type Your Password
You click a link, land on a familiar-looking sign-in page, type your password without thinking twice, and hit enter. A second later something feels off, maybe the page reloads and asks you to log in again, or it redirects somewhere strange. That flicker of “wait, that wasn’t right” usually comes about three seconds too late. […]
Job Scam Alerts as Students Look for Part-Time Work This Fall
A student sees a job posting that pays well above minimum wage for a few hours of “administrative support” a week, no experience needed, start immediately. It sounds like the kind of job every student wishes existed. Sometimes it’s real. This fall, a lot of the time, it isn’t. As classes start back up and […]
How Fake Charity Scams Spike During Late-Summer Disaster Season
A wildfire tears through a hillside town. A hurricane stalls over the coast. A heat wave puts hundreds of people in emergency rooms. Within hours, the news is still unfolding and the fundraising pages are already live. Some are real relief efforts run by people who want to help. Others are fake from the first […]
Back-to-School Phishing Emails: Fake Tuition, Supply Lists, and School Portal Scams
Your inbox in August looks different than it does the rest of the year. Class assignments, supply lists, sports fees, lunch account reminders, portal login prompts. It’s a lot of legitimate email arriving in a short window, and that’s exactly the cover scammers wait for. Fraud that hides inside routine paperwork works because the routine […]