Don't Get Scammed

 

In Bible class last week we were talking about how Satan operates by telling subtle lies. Not outrageous ones, but “little” lies that counterfeit the truth so closely that many people are deceived.

Scams work that way, too. I’m not sure how well the Nigerian prince’s plea succeeded in the beginning, but few people fall for it now. What we do fall for are the scams that use the logo and email letterhead of a real bank to tell you that you are overdrawn or of a real credit card company to say a payment has been declined.

Or the new one that I almost fell for. I typed in my bank’s web address on my computer and tried to sign in, only to receive a notice that my account had been compromised. The notice included a telephone number to call so that they could remedy the situation. Since the web address I had entered was real, I was fooled into calling the number. The person who answered asked for permission to log on to my computer remotely so that he could check for other breaches and fix them. I continued to act like a fool and gave him permission, and he showed me the many “breaches” that had occurred on various popular sites, such as Amazon, where I have accounts. An hour or two later, I was getting both impatient and suspicious, so I shut down my computer and didn’t answer the phone when he tried calling me back. Fortunately, I figured it out before any damage had occurred, but I later saw a notice from a government agency warning people about this fraud.

Poker players talk about “tells” that give clues to someone’s hand. One player’s right eye might twitch whenever she has good cards, while another player may unconsciously scratch behind his left ear while bluffing. There are usually “tells” in scams, too.

If you go into those emails that appear to be from your bank and hover your cursor over the “From” address, it will tell you who the real sender is. Most of the time, anyway, since I can’t guarantee that no scammer can figure his or her way around that. But hovering your cursor there tends to give the scheme away.

Or, in the scam I almost fell for, after I shut the computer down I went into the bank’s app on my cell phone and got in fine, with no warnings that anyone had broken in. So even though I had already figured out that something was wrong, that confirmed it.

Satan’s lies have their own “tells.” If something leaves you wondering, check it against the Bible. And not against a single verse, such as Mark 11:24, but against the Bible as a whole. The prosperity gospel claims that God rewards faithful believers with health, wealth, and overall well-being in this life, which is directly contrary to what Paul suffered for Christ (see 1 Corinthians 4:11-13 and 2 Corinthians 11:24-30) and to verses such as Matthew 16:24-26 and John 15:20. Following Christ does bring great rewards, but they are promised for the next life, not for this one. (See Matthew 5:12 and John 14:1-3.)

So look for those “tells” and don’t get scammed.