Scams don't work because people are foolish.
They work because of five things every scam does — whatever story it tells. Learn those five and you can recognize a scam you have never heard of, including the ones invented next year.
Has it just happened? Don't read anything else first — here is what to do in the next hour, and where to report it in your country.
Why this book exists
Almost everything written about scams is a list of the tricks that were common last year. It ages badly, and it leaves you defenseless against anything not on the list.
This book takes the opposite approach. Every scam — a phone call, a message, a romance, an investment, a voice that sounds exactly like your daughter — pulls the same five levers, and ends with money moving in one of only six ways. Learn the shape and you no longer have to keep up with the details.
And it never once suggests that being caught means being foolish. These schemes defeat accountants, doctors and retired police officers. Shame is the scammer's best friend, because it stops people checking with their family and stops them reporting. A book that talks down to its reader makes them less safe, not more.
What's inside
Seventeen short chapters. Every one ends with a single thing to do — and all of them together take about two and a half hours.
Why this happens to clever people
How scams actually work, the five levers behind every one of them, and why you specifically were chosen.
How they reach you
The phone call, the message, the relationship, the offer — and what happens now that a voice can be copied.
The two habits that stop almost everything
The six ways money is taken, and the one check that beats every scam, including ones nobody has invented yet.
Set up your defenses
The handful of settings, passwords and bank alerts that do the work for you. Plain language, no jargon.
If it happens, and staying ahead
Exactly what to do in the first hour, how to report it anywhere in the world, and the second scam that targets people who have already lost.
Buying this for a parent?
A lot of people do — and it is a difficult gift to give, because it can so easily read as we are worried about you.
This book was written with that in mind. It is warm, it is written for adults, and it never treats the reader as diminished. There is also a section addressed directly to sons and daughters, on how to raise the subject without taking over — because in most families that go badly wrong, somebody saw it coming and said so, and it did not help.
The most useful thing you can do together takes ten minutes: agree a family password, so that a voice on the phone can always be checked. The book explains how, and the free card below has a space for it.
Get the free wallet card
One card for your wallet, free: the six ways money is taken, the two habits that stop most scams, and space for the three numbers you would want in a hurry.
You will also get a short note whenever something important changes — a new kind of scam, or a reporting service that has moved. A few emails a year, no more.
Your address is used to send you the card and occasional updates, and nothing else. You can stop at any time.About the author
For thirteen years I worked in technical and customer support for a large company, and barely a day went by without somebody calling about a scam. I listened to people describe the same handful of tricks over and over — and the same disbelief afterwards, that it could have happened to them.
Then it reached my own family. My sister was taken in by a work-from-home job that did not exist. A friend paid for help with a visa that was never arranged. And I started worrying about my parents, who are online every day and are exactly who these people look for.
So I spent a long time finding out how it really works.
One thing stayed with me above everything else: the same people get caught twice, by the same criminals. That is why this book has a chapter about the second scam — and why I wrote the rest of it.
— Jayson Juanites
Where to get the book
Available as an ebook — read it on a phone, a tablet, a Kindle or a computer.
There is one real advantage to reading this as an ebook: you choose the size of the text. If the print in most books has become tiring, you can make every page of this one as large and as clear as you like.
Written and set for comfortable reading — short chapters, plain language, and no jargon left unexplained.