How I stopped scammers

Here’s how I stopped an elderly relative from getting scammed.

Last year, fraudsters targeted a close relative of mine who has dementia.

The con artists reached out to her on WhatsApp, Facebook and Apple Messages, promising love and romance in return for a steady stream of money from my relative. It didn’t matter that she was 81 years old. Her husband had recently passed away, and she was lonely. She was scammed out of several thousand dollars over the course of a year.

Several members of our family, including me, tried to intervene – with little success. Because of her dementia, she had trouble remembering she’d been scammed, and she fell for the scammers’ promises over and over again.

We tried involving the local cops and social services, but there was little they could do. 

Then I had an idea. Late last year, I signed her up for Incogni, a data-scrubbing service that removes personal details from the web, and especially from people-search sites, which are major brokers of this kind of data.

Before I tried Incogni, when I searched the web for my relative’s name, I was shocked by the number of people-search sites she appeared on, and the crazy amount of detail they had on her. 

Dozens of sites listed her phone number, email addresses, current and past home addresses, age, sex and employment history. They even included links to profiles of her late husband, her kids and more. 

When people get scammed like this, it often seems like it's a random process, a matter of bad luck – but it’s anything but. Scammers glean personal details from data brokers, and the info helps them tailor their scams to make them more convincing. 

Incogni automates the process of removing these details from data brokers and people-search sites, sending out hundreds of demands for personal information to be removed, and continually following up until the data is scrubbed.

Just a week after signing up my relative, Incogni had scrubbed her information from dozens of people-search sites. About two months later, her personal info had been removed from an astonishing 561 sites and data brokers. 

When I search her name now, nothing appears on Google (at least not that I can find). Even when I add identifiable details like her city or former employer, nothing comes up.

More importantly, the scam calls and messages have stopped. She is no longer being targeted by scammers.

I’m very impressed. Nothing we tried before worked, including attempting to lock down her phone, blocking unknown numbers, and removing messaging apps. 

But Incogni did work, and continues to do so. The service keeps monitoring the net for her personal data, which often pops back up when you least expect it.

It’s not just scammers that use your personal data for identity theft and fraud.

It’s also used by marketers and spammers to inundate you with unwanted ads. Potential employers use it to build employment profiles. Health insurance companies examine personal data to hike your rates, and banks use it to approve or deny credit.

In this day and age, it’s wise to keep as much of your personal data, well, as personal and private as you can.

Use Incogni to wipe your data from the net, and protect yourself from scammers, spammers and unscrupulous corporations. Use code CULTOFMAC to get a whopping 55% off.

— Leander Kahney, EIC