This week on the perfect scam.

You have to realize that in the age of COVID-19,

fishing has increased 350%.

There were 300,000 plus new suspicious COVID-19 websites spun up in March alone.

So you might receive information from the CDC,

Air Duff disinfecting, free COVID-19 tests, all of that stuff I need you to be politely paranoid about.

Welcome back to AARP's The Perfect Scam.

I'm your host Michelle Kacinski.

This week, we take you inside a shadowy world,

though one many of us have experienced

one way or another, the world of the hacker, the people who travel

with ease through invisible doorways, virtually undetectable openings into our most personal

information, and even our wallets who know how to get us to

do things we wouldn't ordinarily do.

These are the people who craft the perfect scams. They use what is called social engineering,

simply examining all those details about us that are publicly known, easily

obtainable, to tailor make a scam they can be certain we are likely to fall victim to.

But in this case, these sneakiest of skills are used for good. We even had a hacker try to get me, a surly

skeptical veteran journalist who basically trusts no one. You'll see how that

worked out. And who better to get us started than the guy known as

the father of social engineering Frank Abignell have you seen the movie Catch Me if

you can by the way even if so it's worth watching again on

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