[mikepurvis]

Key phrases make sense to put in place, but another easy safeguard is:

"Before you send anything to anyone, ever, call them back. Doesn't matter if it's me, the bank, a lawyer, whatever... tell them 'hang on I have another call coming in, let me just call you back in a few minutes, okay?'"

[vidarh]

I overheard a cab driver being scammed by someone claiming to be HMRC (UK version of the IRS), and when he asked to call them back they managed to convince him to call them back on Viber, and he was about to when I intervened and pointed out to him that 1) what I'd overheard was blatantly a scam, 2) if he was unsure, to go to their official website and find their number...

If you're going to get people to call you back, it has the problem of ensuring that they call you back on your real number - giving reasons why they have to call you back on some other number is way too easy ("I've lost my phone", "my phone is at home", and so on)

[spiddy]

Also, make sure to use official website, not just Google search, or any chat agent question, the SEO are sometimes poisoned with scam phone numbers.

I consider myself always to be wary of scams and my trust-level is zero when they call me, but I recently almost got myself hooked on an airline support call. I google searched the support number and trusted the AI summary on top and called it, they asked me my reservation number and I happily provided. With the reservation number they have public access to the entire reservation details, they knew my name, my flight, my co-passenger details everything. I called to do a reservation for my pet which is normally not done online. their problem, they got greedy and asked me more than pet travel, iirc they said there was a problem with one of my flights, it wasn't paid and I had to repay on the call. If they just followed along instead of going by the script I would have paid the pet travel amount.

[saidnooneever]

you need to be able to call them back on your own accord. not by them giving you a number to call or calling the same nr back again

[xp84]

Not a thorough safeguard, if scammers have half a brain cell they can provision a VOIP number for such a request. They’re nothing if not accommodating.

[wlesieutre]

You're supposed to call them back on a number you know is really that person/company. This ensures the person you're talking to is actually from your bank and not just calling from a random number and saying "I'm from your bank," or even spoofing a real number of your bank or a family member, because when you call back it will go to the real person and not the impostor.

This is a very useful precaution for banks, and for or calls that come from a family member's real phone number.

But scammers will just open with "I'm in trouble and my phone died" or "I'm in jail calling from a pay phone" and calling back won't do anything to help with that.

[xp84]

Yes, that's my point. There will be a "reason" why the callback needs to be another number.

Also, given at least in America, our cell phone providers STILL haven't fully blocked caller ID spoofing (last I checked, they just add some tiny icon in the rare case that the CID is trustable, and I'd bet 99.9% of people don't even know that exists!) they can spoof the initial call as your number and many targets will probably mistakenly think the CID match is good enough to just skip it, especially in this "very urgent situation" with you being held at knifepoint by the corrupt third-world cops or whatever.

[coldtea]

You call them back on the actual number - e.g. the official number of the bank, or the contact number of your friend, or the phone of your kid, etc, that you know or can find independently.

Not any old random number they give you.

[ceejayoz]

"They say they're going to cut a finger off every time you hang up."

[toast0]

"I guess we'll start calling you Pinky"