Complete a concrete list of settings and understand exactly what each one protects you from.
Settings work when you no longer can
Twenty minutes once, instead of a decision under pressure
Everything so far works during the call. Settings take one calm day: set them up once, and they hold the line on their own.
• A credit freeze: free, online or by phone, at each of the three credit bureaus — Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. While it's on, lenders can't pull your report, so it's hard to open new credit in your name. Existing cards and loans aren't affected. Lifting is free too: online or by phone, a bureau must do it within an hour.
• Two-factor authentication. An authenticator app beats a text code: your number can be moved to someone else's SIM card, and a text can be intercepted.
• A password manager: a unique password per site. On someone else's domain it fills in nothing — a free fake detector: if autofill stays empty, the address is wrong.
• Transfer limits and a separate card for online shopping. They don't stop the con, but they cap the loss.
• A trusted contact: someone your brokerage or bank may call if it suspects fraud. At home, agree with someone close: no big transfer before you've talked to them.
Here's how the last one hits a lever. A person is kept on the line for two hours, told to call no one. But the family rule says no big transfer before calling the son, and the bank may call him as the trusted contact. Isolation, the scam's foundation, stops working — not because the person caught on, but because the setting is there.
Lesson notes
Twenty minutes once, instead of a decision under pressure
Everything so far works during the call. Settings take one calm day: set them up once, and they hold the line on their own.
• A credit freeze: free, online or by phone, at each of the three credit bureaus — Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. While it's on, lenders can't pull your report, so it's hard to open new credit in your name. Existing cards and loans aren't affected. Lifting is free too: online or by phone, a bureau must do it within an hour.
• Two-factor authentication. An authenticator app beats a text code: your number can be moved to someone else's SIM card, and a text can be intercepted.
• A password manager: a unique password per site. On someone else's domain it fills in nothing — a free fake detector: if autofill stays empty, the address is wrong.
• Transfer limits and a separate card for online shopping. They don't stop the con, but they cap the loss.
• A trusted contact: someone your brokerage or bank may call if it suspects fraud. At home, agree with someone close: no big transfer before you've talked to them.
Here's how the last one hits a lever. A person is kept on the line for two hours, told to call no one. But the family rule says no big transfer before calling the son, and the bank may call him as the trusted contact. Isolation, the scam's foundation, stops working — not because the person caught on, but because the setting is there.