Scam Awareness by Age
The scams that actually target each age band, what they look like from inside, and the one sentence that defuses most of them.
The scams targeting children change with age — free-currency generators at seven, phishing logins at twelve, trading scams and money mule recruitment at fifteen, sextortion at sixteen — but every one of them relies on urgency plus secrecy, which is the single tell worth teaching.
Scam Awareness by Age
Frequently asked
What should a teenager do about sextortion?
Stop responding, do not pay, do not delete anything, and tell an adult and the police. Paying never ends the demands and reliably increases them. This is a crime committed against them, and reporting routes exist in every country specifically for this.
What is a money mule?
Someone who receives money into their account and passes it on for a cut. It is often presented to teenagers as easy earning by someone they know, and it is a criminal offence they can be prosecuted for, with consequences for their ability to hold a bank account for years.
What is the single most useful thing to teach?
That urgency plus secrecy is a scam, whatever else is going on, and that they will not be in trouble for telling you. Almost every scam that escalates does so because the child was too ashamed or frightened to say something early.
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