How fraud fighters stay safe from scams

5. MAKE SURE YOU'RE SHOPPING ON VALID SITES. Examine URLs carefully, says Craig Costigan, CEO of Nice Actimize, a software company that develops technology to detect and prevent

financial fraud. He almost bought bogus Yankees tickets for a recent game, thinking a fake online site was legitimate. “If I was moving fast, I would have clicked the link, punched in my

credit card and said, ‘Yes, I’ll take two tickets,' ” says Costigan. One way to confirm that you have the correct site is to type the business name and the word “official” in your

search engine. 6. TURN OFF WI-FI ON HOME DEVICES. When Pitt isn’t using her smart home gym equipment or watching her smart TV, she shuts off their Wi-Fi. “They’re easily hacked,” says Pitt.

“Some of the security for those devices isn’t that good.” 7. CHECK CHIP READERS BEFORE PAYING. Before inserting her card into a machine at a gas station or grocery store, Pitt tests for a

skimmer — a device that crooks can place in an ATM to steal personal information from cards — by grasping and wiggling it. If there’s give, it could be a skimmer. 8. GET A SECONDARY PHONE

NUMBER. Google Voice, Truecaller, YouMail and other apps and cybersecurity companies let you create a second number that will go to your phone. Quilici gives his real number only to family

and friends, and his secondary number to retailers. He then blocks any calls — likely to be scammers who found the number through a data breach — to that secondary number. 9. TURN ON SIM

PROTECTION.  SIM (subscriber identity module) cards connect your phone number to your iPhone or Android device. If someone hijacks your SIM — usually by impersonating you and persuading your

carrier to switch the SIM to a new device — they can get access to your accounts, says Alex Quilici, CEO of YouMail, a technology company that guards against robocalls. To protect yourself,

contact your service provider to set up protections, like using a PIN if you want to transfer your number. 10. CREATE A FAMILY CODE PHRASE. Scammers are using AI-fueled voice cloning to

make their so-called “grandparent” scams (or family-emergency scams) more sophisticated. So if one of his three kids calls and says they're in trouble, Darius Kingsley, head of consumer

banking practices at Chase, will ask the caller for their family code phrase. You can also use a code word, he notes, but “sometimes a phrase, maybe a line from everyone’s favorite TV show,

can be easier to remember.”