What is it called when someone attempts to befriend you online for the purpose of stealing?

October is National Bullying Prevention Month, and schools across the United States are standing up against bullying, and educating on prevention. But before we work to prevent it, it’s important to understand what cyberbullying is.

10 Types of Cyberbullying

1. Exclusion

Exclusion is the act of leaving someone out deliberately. Exclusion exists with in-person bullying situations, but is also used online to target and bully a victim. For example, your child might be excluded/uninvited to groups or parties while they see other friends being included, or left out of message threads or conversations that involve mutual friends.

2. Harassment

Harassment is a broad category under which many types of cyberbullying fall into, but it generally refers to a sustained and constant pattern of hurtful or threatening online messages sent with the intention of doing harm to someone.

3. Outing/Doxing

Outing, also known as doxing, refers to the act of openly revealing sensitive or personal information about someone without their consent for purposes of embarrassing or humiliating them. This can range from the spreading of personal photos or documents of public figures to sharing an individual’s saved personal messages in an online private group. The key is the lack of consent from the victim.

4. Trickery

Trickery is similar to outing, with an added element of deception. In these situations, the bully will befriend their target and lull them into a false sense of security. Once the bully has gained their target’s trust, they abuse that trust and share the victim’s secrets and private information to a third party or multiple third parties.

5. Cyberstalking

Cyberstalking is a particularly serious form of cyberbullying that can extend to threats of physical harm to the child being targeted. It can include monitoring, false accusations, threats, and is often accompanied by offline stalking. It is a criminal offense and can result in a restraining order, probation, and even jail time for the perpetrator.

6. Fraping

Fraping is when a bully uses your child’s social networking accounts to post inappropriate content with their name. It can be harmless when friends write funny posts on each other’s profiles, but has potential to be incredibly harmful. For example, a bully posting racial/homophobic slurs through someone else’s profile to ruin their reputation.

7. Masquerading

Masquerading happens when a bully creates a made up profile or identity online with the sole purpose of cyberbullying someone. This could involve creating a fake email account, fake social media profile, and selecting a new identity and photos to fool the victim. In these cases, the bully tends to be someone the victim knows quite well.

8. Dissing

Dissing refers to the act of a bully spreading cruel information about their target through public posts or private messages to either ruin their reputation or relationships with other people. In these situations, the bully tends to have a personal relationship with the victim, either as an acquaintance or as a friend.

9. Trolling

Trolling is when a bully will seek out to intentionally upset others by posting inflammatory comments online. Trolling may not always be a form of cyberbullying, but it can be used as a tool to cyberbully when done with malicious and harmful intent. These bullies tend to be more detached from their victims, and do not have a personal relationship.

10. Flaming

This type of online bullying constitutes of posting about or directly sending insults and profanity to their target. Flaming is similar to trolling, but will usually be a more direct attack on a victim to incite them into online fights.

Source: Kaspersky Lab, EndCyberbullying.Org, Norton Security

For more information on cyberbullying, please visit:

Cyberbullying Research Center
StopBullying.Gov
StompOutBullying.Org

About Securly

Securly is an EdTech company whose mission is to keep students safe and productive at school and at home. Wherever digital devices are used, Securly’s cloud-based products work to filter content, manage apps, ensure compliance, alert schools to cyberbullying and self-harm, while engaging teachers, students, and parents. Securly’s patented automation and AI sentiment analysis, combined with 24/7 human monitoring by trained safety experts, protect over 10 million students each day. Awarded for innovation and customer service, Securly is headquartered in San Jose, CA and Charlotte, NC with offices on three continents.

Teens have grown up with computers and smartphones. So it's no surprise that they are tech and Internet savvy, giving them confidence online. They also tend to be inexperienced and more trusting than most age groups when it comes to interacting with others. This combination can make young people vulnerable to scam artists, especially in an increasingly dangerous online world.

According to the FBI, 14,919 scam incidents were reported by people aged 19 and younger in 2021. These scams resulted in losses of $101.4 million to the teens that reported them.

"Minors under 18 are far more likely to become victims of identity theft than adults," says scam expert, Steve Weisman. "They are targeted for two reasons. The first is that they take longer to find out that they are victims of identity theft, thereby allowing the identity thieves more time to use their identities for criminal purposes. In addition, their information is used often in synthetic identity theft where criminals create a totally phony identity with information taken from a number of different people."

According to a 2021 study, social media use is up 84% among teens compared to 2015. As many as 94% of 8- to 18-year-olds have access to a smartphone. It only makes sense to know what scammers are doing and how to defeat them. Here are 10 of the more common scams that directly or indirectly target teenagers and what you can do to help ensure your teen doesn't become a victim.

Key Takeaways

• The onset of COVID-19 and the resulting isolation were especially hard on young people, which led to an increase in scams targeting teens.
• Scams that target teenagers abound, especially in their favorite habitat—the Internet.
• Fraudsters use social media to trick teens into providing personal information, which can be used for identity theft.
• Many scams take the form of ads and online offers, promising luxury goods for amazingly cheap prices—goods that never arrive.
• Other scams involve contests, scholarships, or employment opportunities that require the teen to pay some sort of fee or deposit.
• Yet another trick is to lure teens with free services for smartphones that actually incur a monthly charge.
  

1. Social Media Scams

Social media is prime territory for Internet-based scams that target teens. Teenagers, after all, are social animals, and recent pandemic lockdowns have helped create a perfect storm of teen anxiety and scammer opportunity that continues to play out on most of the major social media platforms.

Among scams common to social media are those involving identity theft, or the stealing of another person's personal information. Chief among these are surveys or contests that request personal information and catfishing in which the scammer poses as someone they are not and befriends the victim with the intention of taking money, personal information, or more.

Though these are the most common social media scams, many other types of fraudulent activity show up on these platforms including most of the rest of the scams in this article.

2. Online Shopping Scams

"Teens and millennials are also big online spenders for expensive goods," says Weisman. "Often they are lured into phony websites that take their money and sell them nothing, lured into providing personal information used for purposes of identity theft or tricked into clicking on links and downloading malware."

Finding the latest iPhone, designer handbag, or state-of-the-art headphones for a fraction of the retail price sounds too good to be true. Unfortunately, that's exactly what it is: too good to be true. When paid for, online bargain-basement-priced goods rarely arrive.

Another version of this scam involves knockoffs or counterfeit products pretending to be the real deal. Once the province of shady back-alley salesmen from the trunk of a car, online knock-off sales have found a new home and, in bargain-hunting teens, new victims. The adage remains: "If it seems too good to be true," and so forth.

Like many adults, teens are often so embarrassed about being duped that they won't tell their parents or the authorities, so many of these scams go unreported.

3. Identity Theft

This scam deserves special mention because it is one of the most prevalent and also because social media is just one online area where it appears. Others include websites, email, messaging apps, and pop-up windows.

The naiveté of youth often makes it easier for would-be identity thieves to phish for information. Young people don't always realize that they're handing over personal data that can be used for identity theft. This is illustrated in a survey that found a much higher rate (15%) of identity theft among those 18 to 29 years old than among those 45 and older (8%).

Any online interaction that asks for personal information could be an identity theft operation. This includes:

• False employment opportunities
• Fake applications for credit cards, scholarships and grants, and student loans
• So-called freebies

Weisman also notes that job scams can lead to identity theft or worse. "Some of these job scams send counterfeit checks in an amount more than what the young person is to be paid, and they are tricked into depositing the money in their account and wiring the balance back to their 'employer.' The check sent by the scammer ultimately bounces, but the money wired by the young person is gone forever."

4. Skill or Talent Contests

Another popular online scam that thrives outside of social media is a variation on acting and modeling scams, which are also alive and well on the Internet. More recent scams involve skill-based contests in which teens are urged to enter artwork, music compositions, or creative writing in order to win money and, more importantly, fame.

These scams may or may not require an entry fee and if the teen wins, even more cash. Spoiler alert: The entry does win and the additional fee or fees supposedly help with the cost of promotion, publication, and so forth.

9

The average number of hours teenagers spend online each day, according to the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.

5. Scholarship and Grant Scams

As college costs loom and young people (and their parents) worry about financing higher education, skepticism about unsolicited scholarships and grant offers may not be as strong as it should be. The goal of these scams may be simple identity theft or it may be a more direct attempt to charge for so-called proprietary information about scholarships or free money the public doesn't know exists.

These bogus offers sometimes take the form of guarantees you will get your money back if you don't receive the scholarship; special fee-based scholarships; and even unclaimed scholarships only available through a special fund you can only access by—you guessed it—paying a fee.

6. Student Loan Debt Forgiveness Scams

The scam companies often have names that make it appear they are government-affiliated. Real student loan forgiveness, applicable to federal student loans only, involves no fees.

In addition to promises of forgiveness, some scammers promise consolidation loans that also appear to be from the government. In fact, these are private loans that charge high fees just to apply. Legitimate student loan consolidation does not require a fee.

The U.S. Department of Education continued the student loan payment pause until Dec. 31, 2022, due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. During this forbearance period, eligible loan payments are suspended and incur a 0% interest rate. All collection activity is also stopped on defaulted loans. Private student loans are not eligible for this moratorium.

7. Online Auctions

Auction scams have been found to target unsuspecting teens in various ways. One scam involves an auction that the teen wins for an item that doesn't exist or never arrives—even though the teen has paid for it.

Alternatively, when an unsuspecting teen is encouraged to auction off possessions, the scam artist (the auction house rep) requires the teen to send in the item in advance, before the buyer's payment arrives, or even before bids are placed. Of course, the funds never arrive or the auction never happens, and the rep disappears.

8. Cellphone Freebies

As noted above, with nearly all teens having access to cellphones, scammers have flocked to the space with confusing offers of free ringtones and wallpaper images that arrive on a regular basis.

Missing from the pitch is clear language about the fact the teen has subscribed to an expensive service with monthly fees that can add up quickly. Worse yet, the fees often come with confusing names that do not make the purpose of the fee clear.

9. Weight Loss Scams

Many teens have body image issues. Though social media has received plenty of attention for the role it plays in this, scammers are equally culpable because they weaponize insecurity and use it to encourage teens to spend money on useless and sometimes dangerous products and services.

Scams include everything from so-called keto diet pills to free trial offers that lead to long-term contracts to doctored images in ads and more. Eating a healthy diet and regular exercise are the keys to weight loss, but scammers promise quicker and easier results for a fee.

10. Webcam Security

Another type of fraudulent activity magnified by the pandemic is webcam security. Zoom classes, a desire on the part of teens to connect with classmates while in quarantine, and a general desire to remain socially active, resulted in the growing use of webcams and an understandable but dangerous lack of webcam security.

The scam part of this situation involves the ability of hackers to infiltrate webcams that are not covered or otherwise disabled, and as a result, collect information and images that can be used to blackmail teens and their parents.

How to Fight Back

"Trust me," says Weisman, "you can't trust anyone." It's an old but eternally important life lesson. If you're a parent, take the time to discuss with your teen(s) the types of information that scammers are looking for and emphasize the need for security, privacy, and caution in sharing data.

Beyond that, here are some specific steps teens can take to protect themselves:

• Install malware and antivirus software and activate it.
• Use unique passwords for every site you visit.
• Don't click on links from anyone you don't know or trust.
• Unsolicited messages or offers should alwaysbe treated with a great deal of skepticism.
• Check online reviews before visiting a website.
• Don't give out personal information unless you know you can trust the person receiving it.
• Never pay to enter a contest, apply for a scholarship, or get a job. Period.
• Learn what a reverse lookup search engine is and how to use it.
  
• Don't be embarrassed to tell your parents or a trusted adult if you think you've been scammed.

What Percentage of Young People Use Smartphones?

Based on a 2021 study by Common Sense Media, teenage cell phone use is up 84% compared to 2015, with 94% of 8- to 18-year-olds having access to a smartphone.

What Is Catfishing on the Internet?

Catfishing is when someone uses images and information to create a new identity online. They then use that identity to damage someone's reputation or to befriend an unsuspecting person for the purpose of scamming them or worse.

Do You Have to Pay to Have Student Loan Debt Forgiven?

No. Scammers charge a fee for student loan debt forgiveness assistance, but neither legitimate debt forgiveness nor loan consolidation requires upfront payment. Both are free to student loan borrowers.

The Bottom Line

Children are extremely susceptible to scams due to their young age and inexperience. As many of today's scams happen over the Internet, it can be difficult for parents to know when a child has been scammed. There are actions you can take to protect your child and family so that neither of you is taken advantage of.

What is it called when someone attempts to befriend you online for the purpose of stealing confidential sensitive information?

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