This Single Thing Is The Biggest Warning You’re Being Scammed, And It’s Information We All Need

That can be difficult to do in the heat of the moment — especially if someone is claiming to be a representative from an institution we work with, and they’re warning us that we might lose everything if we don’t act quickly. However, trusting our guts and taking a step back to analyze the situation can save us a lot of agony — and money.

“Most everyone I speak to said, ‘Yeah, I didn’t really feel like I should be doing it, but I did it because they had all this other information on me ― like, they knew my address, they knew my name, birth date, they knew my Social Security number,’” Baker said. “All that information — with all these huge data breaches that we’ve seen over the last several years, bad guys get ahold of that information. So they use it to set trust and context, and then they get us to do something.”

Baker tells clients to “trust [their] intuition,” and to keep in mind that banks and other institutions are never going to ask for that kind of information over the phone or via email. 

“The best medicine there is to hang up the phone, look on the back of your credit card, your bank card, or wherever they’re pretending to be from, and call them directly,” he said. “Or go visit them, if there’s a local branch.”

Another way to instantly get a gut check, Baker advised, is to ask ourselves: “If I do what they want me to do, am I willing to suffer a complete loss or all the damages that can go along with this?”

“If the answer is ‘No, I’m not willing to tolerate that,’ then discontinue the communication and verify with the institution and/or the authorities that you’re dealing with the right people and it’s not a scammer,” he said.

Baker also chatted with us about ways to stay safe from social media scams, why you should always think twice before scanning a QR code, and much more.

Listen to the full episode here or wherever you get your podcasts.

For more from Jeremiah Baker, head here.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.