Making a one-page sheet to tape by your computer
The previous session covered why your habits matter more than antivirus software. That was the last of the technical material, more or less. Today is different. Today we build something you can physically tape to the wall.
Here is the recurring problem. People attend this class, follow along, feel good about it, and then three weeks later their mother calls, or their neighbor calls, and the "IRS" is on the line, and every point we covered evaporates, because there is a real person on the phone using a genuinely frightening voice, and the brain does not have time to retrieve eight weeks of lessons.
My mother nearly wired money to a fake IRS agent, and only avoided it because I happened to be home that day. Had I not answered, I do not know what would have happened. She listened to the entire script. She believed it. That troubled me for weeks, and it is a significant part of why I began keeping a notebook of these calls. But the point I actually want you to take from it is this: in the moment, she did not need a class. She needed one line to say back to them. That is all.
So that is what we are constructing today. One page. A font large enough to read without your glasses. Taped near the phone or the computer, wherever you will actually see it.
What goes on the sheet
Keep it short. If it is long, no one reads it while panicking, and panicking is exactly the condition under which they need it.
Line 1: The rule. Something like: "If it feels urgent, hang up or close it. Call back on a number I already have." That is the entire class in one sentence. Nearly every scam requires you to move fast before you think. Slow down and you win, every time. I would rather you be five minutes late paying a bill than one click into something you cannot undo.
Line 2: Who to call. Write down the actual phone number printed on the back of your bank card. Write down mine, or your child's, or whoever serves as the "check with me first" person in your family. Not a number you would have to look up, one you can read straight off the page while your hands are shaking a little, because that happens, and it is normal.
Line 3: The three things that are always fake. - The IRS does not call you. They mail letters. - Your bank will never ask you to move money "to keep it safe." Full stop. That phrase alone means hang up. - No legitimate party requests gift cards as payment. Not the power company, not the police, not your grandson stuck in Mexico.
Line 4: The two-second check. Before clicking a link, hover over it, or press and hold on your phone, and read where it actually goes. Before calling a number in a text, do not. Look it up yourself.
Line 5: The permission slip. This is the line people skip, and it is the one that matters most. Write down, in your own handwriting: "It's okay to hang up. It's okay to say I need to check with someone first." People fail to hang up because it feels rude. Scammers rely on exactly that. Grant yourself permission on paper so you do not have to invent it under pressure.
Making it
Use a plain sheet of paper, a marker, large letters. Do not email yourself a neatly typed version and consider it done, because the entire point is that it is physically present: visible, plain, unmissable. Tape it to the wall by the phone, or the monitor, or wherever you sit when paying bills or checking email. If you have parents or a spouse at greater risk than you, make them one as well, and tape it up yourself. Do not simply tell them to.
One point I will state plainly. This sheet will not stop a capable scammer from making the attempt. It will stop you, mid-conversation, from completing the mistake. That is the function, not prevention of the attempt, but prevention of the follow-through.
If someone in your life receives a call like this and is unsure, that hesitation is the entire game. My mother hesitated for about four seconds before she nearly stopped hesitating altogether. The sheet exists so that those four seconds become "let me check the number on the wall" instead of "well, they sounded official."
Before next time
Make your sheet this week, and if you have a parent, sibling, or neighbor who is a likely target, make theirs while you are at it and tape it up for them.
~kenneth