Online Fraud Is Evolving: Essential Habits and Verification Practices for Digital Safety
You have good awareness and survival instincts if you can smell fraud at first impression.
But ask yourself this:
How can a company change its identity in 5 days: Jio yesterday, Airtel today, just to make you pay a bill?
If you didn’t catch it instantly, don’t beat yourself up.
Instead, build habits that make scammers irrelevant.
After having gone through multiple phishing attempts targeted at me and some basic research, I have been able to jot down my learnings together that can help you build basic hygiene rules that beat scammers every single time and no tech expertise required to beat them!
Rules & Habits to Outsmart Scammers (Every Time)
1. Always see the world with suspicion
Not paranoia.
Just default disbelief.
Assume every unsolicited message is false unless you initiated the interaction.
2. Behave like a f**king villager (intentionally)
Meaning:
You don’t know SMS
You don’t know WhatsApp
You don’t know links
You don’t know emails
Unless you triggered the company yourself.
No request from your side = no action from your side.
3. Urgency is a lie
There is no emergency in billing, KYC, refunds, or disconnections.
The only person in a hurry is the scammer.
Pause = protection.
4. Government & large companies follow strict sender formats
They do not:
Use personal 10-digit numbers
Write emotional or broken English
Offer last-minute discounts
Say “Sir please” or “urgent today.”
Look for:
Registered sender IDs (AD-XXXX)
Short codes
Consistent language templates
5. No legit company asks you to “click to pay.”
Real companies expect you to:
Open their official app
Or log in via your own browser, manually
Any SMS link = suspicious by default.
6. Discounts don’t appear under threat
“Pay today or service stops” + “50% discount”
is classic fraud psychology.
Fear + reward = manipulation.
7. Missed calls + follow-up messages are engineered traps
Pattern:
Missed call (attention)
Reminder/threat (panic)
Link (action)
Real systems don’t work like this.
8. Check the URL like a lawyer, not like a user
Look for:
Extra letters (airteI, airtell, airtel-pay)
Subdomains (airtel.payment.verify-now.xyz)
Shortened links
If the URL isn’t boring and obvious; walk away.
9. Fake websites look real now
Scammers now use:
HTTPS
Logos
Fonts
Clean UI
Copy-paste brand language
Design ≠ legitimacy anymore.
Verification beats aesthetics.
10. Use independent tools to verify links & domains
Before clicking anything, check here:
VirusTotal – scans links across 90+ security engines
https://www.virustotal.comGoogle Safe Browsing – flags phishing & malware
https://transparencyreport.google.com/safe-browsing/searchURLVoid – reputation check for domains
https://www.urlvoid.comScamAdviser – trust score, domain age, risk signals
https://www.scamadviser.comWho.is / ICANN Lookup – check domain age & ownership
https://who.is
If a “company website” was created last week, run.
11. No personalization = no legitimacy
Legit messages usually include:
Your name
Partial account number
Reference ID
“Dear Customer” + action request = red flag.
12. OTPs are never for verification
OTP = authorization, not validation.
If you didn’t initiate the action, never share or approve anything.
13. Apps over messages. Always.
For banks, telcos, and utilities:
Ignore messages
Open the official app yourself
Check status there
If it’s real, it’ll exist inside the app.
14. Report, block, move on
In India:
Forward spam SMS to 1909
Block the number
Don’t engage (engagement validates your number)
Silence hurts scammers more than arguments.
Final rule (the most important one)
Nothing bad happens if you don’t click.
Everything bad starts after you do.
Scammers thrive on speed.
Survivors move slowly.
Share this. Someone in your network will need it more than they admit.
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