Be savvy - don't get scammed
New technology - new scams
New technologies have many benefits, but they also mean new opportunities for fraudsters and con artists. Internet and mobile phone scams cost Irish consumers millions of euro each year, and many of these scams are specifically targeted at teenagers.
In April 2008 the National Consumer Agency launched its 'Be Savvy - Don't Get Scammed' awareness campaign for teenagers in Ireland. This campaign identifies the most common scams and the steps that teenagers, parents and teachers can take to beat the fraudsters.
The campaign is being conducted on the social networking website Bebo and on the NCA's consumer website ConsumerConnect.ie.
Teachers can play a very important role in the campaign, as a well informed teacher is one of the first lines of defence against scams specifically targeted at teenagers.
While the very young may be the most vulnerable, students aged 16 and over are a particularly important group too because they are about to become adults, when they will be subject to the full extent of the laws of the State including debt. At that point they will need to be able to fend for themselves without the safety net of being a minor.
Common scams
Most teenagers in Ireland have mobile phones and access to the Internet, and many will have access to their parents' credit cards to make agreed purchases. Others will buy or get presents of "pre-paid" credit cards, which are nominally available to those aged 16 and above.
Many of the latest scams aimed at teenagers involve these new technologies, from mobile phones to web pages. The most common scams include:
- Expensive ringtone charges which may be connected to subscription services
- SMS scams based on text message subscription services
- 1550 lines asking you to claim a 'prize' such as a holiday or an MP3 player when you haven't entered a competition
- Chain letters
- People they have never met or heard of posing as their 'friends' and looking for personal details on social networking sites like Bebo, Myspace and Facebook
Classroom activities
Raising teenagers' awareness of these types of scam can be integrated into technology/computer classes.
But while these scams make heavy use of the latest technologies, the issues involved are not just "technical" or "computer-related".
For example, these scams can also be addressed in many other areas of the Transition Year programme to develop students' social awareness and social competence. The teaching situations can take many formats, such as the following three examples.
Example #1: Research-based exercises
Students can also be given exercises using search engines such as Google to show how much personal information can be gathered about a particular individual - or how to learn more about the background of a company or check out an apparent scam.
Besides raising awareness about how scams such as "identity theft" operate, these exercises can also help to develop the students' research skills.
Example #2: Applying specific subjects
These scams can also be examined within specific subjects in the curriculum. For example, the students could discuss the ethics of encouraging the consumer to believe they are receiving more than they actually are.
Similarly, Mathematics can be used to show why chain letters and other kinds of "pyramid scheme" cannot work in practice (i.e. why it is both theoretically and practically impossible to continue the scheme beyond a certain stage).
A pyramid scheme is so-called because of the shape of the layers of people it involves. If a con artist recruits 10 people, and they are supposed to recruit 10 people, and so on, this is the logic. Step 1 - 10 people; step 2 - 100; step 3 - 1,000; step 4 - 10,000; step 5 - 100,000 etc. In just 10 steps it would require 10 billion people to make a pyramid work - more than the entire population of the planet!
Example #3: Acceptable Use Policies
An Acceptable Use Policy (AUP, sometimes called an Acceptable Usage Policy) is a set of rules applied by social networks and website owners that set limits on how the network or site may be used.
AUPs are also often used by schools, colleges and businesses to cover the most important points about what users are, and are not, allowed to do within the organisation's IT system.
Sometimes AUP documents do a similar job to documents labelled Terms of Service (TOS) or Terms and Conditions (Ts and Cs), for example, as used by Google Gmail and Yahoo.
A useful classroom exercise would be to ask students to read site AUPs or Ts & Cs of mainstream reputable services such as Gmail and other services that they have used such as sites offering ringtones. This would be followed by a classroom discussion about what they understood and what they didn't, how to spot the "dodgy" ones and why it is important not to click the "Accept" button if they have doubts about any part of the AUP or Ts & Cs.
Other online teaching resources
Webwise.ie has a wide range of online teaching resources. These include:
MakeITSecure.org has guides for all ages, including a wide range of videos and animations on subjects such as social networking, phishing and identity theft.