Review: Scam me if you can

 Scam me if you can is written by Frank Abagnale, who also wrote the famous book Catch me if you can! The book is well written, in a transparent prose style that's full of anecdotes and stories about famous scams, some of it will make you question practices you might have considered innocent.

For instance, I've never thought letting someone stay at your house would be a risk, but there's a story in the book about someone who got her identity stolen because of precisely that! The book's full of tips, but you probably already know most of them:

• Never post personally identifiable information on social media (I've turned off birthday visibility on Facebook as a result of this)
• Always turn on 2 factor authentication
• T-mobile (and other providers) actually have scam protection settings you might want to turn on
• If an offer is too good to be true, it always is
• Scary phone calls are almost always scams --- government business is always conducted through the mail
• Passwords suck. The sooner they go away, the better.
• Shred everything that comes to your house.
• When someone calls you from the authorities, get their name, number, and location, hang up, and then do a look up on their actual place of business and call them back to verify
• Lotteries never ask for money up front to collect.
• Never assume a check from someone you don't know will clear.

Most of this is common sense, but when you have a person dressed in police uniform at your doorstep it might not be so easy to stay calm and do that verification! But I guess that's why people still get scammed all the time.

All in all, the book's full of tips and made me change one of my online behaviors. If that saves me one case of identity theft I think the time spent reading the book would have been worth it!