If you answer a spam call, you might start receiving more spam and scam calls, become a victim of SIM card swapping or get your phone number spoofed. Based on Truecaller’s findings, from July 2023 to July 2024, Americans collectively spent approximately 234,000,000 hours answering spam calls. While not every spam call is intended to deceive you like a scam call, receiving unwanted phone calls from persistent telemarketers can quickly become annoying.

Several tactics can lead to medical identity theft, including someone physically stealing your sensitive information, phishing scams, insider attacks and data breaches. Continue reading to learn what medical identity theft is, how it can happen and ways you can protect yourself against it.

You can tell if you have spyware on your device by looking for signs such as your device’s battery draining quickly, overheating, increased pop-ups or data usage and unfamiliar apps. Spyware is a kind of malware that, once unknowingly installed on your device, allows cybercriminals to spy on you and steal your private information. This information could be used by cybercriminals or sold on the dark web to commit fraud or identity theft.

Although there is no way to stop receiving all spam calls, there are steps you can take to reduce the number of spam calls you receive. According to Truecaller’s 2024 report, Americans collectively receive an average of 2.5 billion spam and unwanted calls every month. While spam calls do not always have malicious intent, like hacking your phone or stealing your money, they can grow annoying since they are unwanted and persistent.

You can mitigate the risk of ransomware attacks by regularly backing up your data, updating your device with the latest software, implementing least-privilege access, using a business password manager and educating employees about security awareness, among other things. Ransomware attacks occur when organizations are prevented from accessing files and data until they’ve paid a ransom to the cybercriminal who infected their devices with malware.

You can protect yourself from identity theft by safeguarding your Social Security number and other sensitive documents, regularly reviewing your credit reports, using a dark web monitoring tool and not oversharing online. Identity theft occurs when someone steals and uses your sensitive documents unbeknownst to you to gain money or access to your confidential information. Examples of sensitive documents include Social Security numbers, credit card numbers, bank account information and passport numbers.

A password is compromised when it’s leaked in a data breach and made available on the dark web, allowing others to gain unauthorized access to your online accounts. This risk not only arises from a data breach; your passwords can also be compromised in a phishing attack or if you don’t store your passwords securely. Dealing with multiple compromised passwords can be scary and stressful, but luckily there are steps you can take to protect your online accounts.

You can avoid falling for Medicare scam calls by blocking unknown numbers, refusing to give out your personal information to unsolicited callers and staying informed about common phone scams. Although all types of scams can be dangerous, scams involving Medicare endanger their targets by potentially compromising their health insurance and identity. Read more to learn what Medicare scam calls are, how they work, some common examples and how you can avoid falling for these scams.

An account takeover attack is a type of identity theft that occurs when a cybercriminal gains access to your online account and changes your login credentials to lock you out. Once you cannot log back in, a cybercriminal will use your identity to steal private information or even scam others. You can prevent account takeover attacks by using strong passwords, enabling Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and investing in dark web monitoring.

You can tell if someone is scamming you online if they make grammatical or spelling errors, create a sense of urgency, ask you for personal information, offer you something that’s too good to be true or reach out to you unexpectedly. Read the following signs that someone is scamming you online, learn about the most common online scams to watch out for and note our tips on how to protect yourself from becoming a victim.