Spotting and stopping back-to-school scams

Scammers prey on chaos, and the back-to-school pandemonium offers up plenty of opportunities to steal personal and financial information from parents overwhelmed by registration forms, shopping lists and new computers, platforms and apps. 

Remember the ABCs: Always Be Cybersecure! It’s crucial to stay vigilant against these back-to-school scams.

01
Scammers see students and parents getting ready for the school year as an excellent opportunity to launch phishing campaigns. These can range from offers from fake online stores with irresistible discounts on school supplies to emails with phony scholarship offers, all designed to steal your personal information and money.

Pro tip: Verify the legitimacy of an offer by researching through trusted third parties before you click.

02
With impostor scams, the fraudster calls, texts or emails you posing as someone else, like a school official warning that a payment is late to convince you to send money or risk being dropped from classes, the sports team, etc. To make it more realistic, they might spoof the phone number to make it look like it is actually coming from a contact you recognize.

Pro tip: Hang up if you get a call involving money. Instead, go online to find the official phone number for the entity the caller claimed to be with and call that number to find out if there's really an issue.

03
Starting a new grade in school can be tricky, and sometimes our kids need help. But beware when it comes to finding a tutor online: Homework helper scams are becoming more common. People may pose as tutors to help your student with an assignment, but once you pay, they demand more money. Refuse to pay and the criminal may turn on you. They may go as far as to send threatening emails or text messages accusing your child of cheating or plagiarism.

Pro tip: Only use trusted avenues of finding help for your child.

04
I love the annual tradition of posting first-day school pictures, but parents should pay attention to the information they share on social media. Signs that include a teacher’s name, school mascot or other personal details might seem harmless but could be valuable to someone with malicious intent. The security questions we use to unlock accounts sometimes use this very same information, or they are pieces that we or our kids use to create passwords.

Pro tip: Consider sharing just a photo of them all dressed up and ready for their first day of school and leave the personal details for the scrapbook instead.

05
Teach your children about cyber hygiene early, but understand that they will probably not be as attuned to potential threats, which could create vulnerabilities for you and others in your home.

Pro tip: Consider segmenting your home Wi-Fi to keep anything malicious that enters your kids’ computers or their guests’ devices from affecting your main home network. Go into your settings to create primary Wi-Fi access for you, secondary access for your kids, and guest Wi-Fi for their friends.