Trap 3. ‘You Must Hurry Up To Get Full Benefits From The Scheme Or Offer’

You receive an email about an incredible deal on a popular product, but it's only available for a few hours. The offer is very tempting, with a massive discount, which is almost too good to be true. Under pressure to buy immediately, you provide your payment information. However, the product never arrives, and you discover the website is fake. There are chances you will lose your money in such a case.

Says Shetty of BankBazaar.com: “Creating a false sense of urgency is a common trick of phishing attacks and scams. Scammers do this to pressure you to act quickly without giving you time to think or verify their claims. The more you are pushed into doing something, the less time you have to evaluate if this is the best or even a reasonable course of action for you.”

It is important to remember that scamsters prey on human psychology to cheat us. Human beings have a behavioural error known as urgency bias. When faced with many tasks, we tend to prioritise time-sensitive tasks instead of the important ones even if they are more complicated and may require more hard work. In today’s world, the fear of missing out (FOMO) adds to the sense of urgency.

So, when there is a sense of urgency, we are more likely to make a hasty decision, and scammers often prey on this behavioural aspect to push us to make not-carefully-thought-of decisions, which could be detrimental to our financial life.

Says Shetty: “Your best defence against such high-pressure tactics is to take a step back and give yourself time to think. Any time you are asked for money by someone you don’t know citing a threat to you or your loved ones, or if you are asked to close a purchase decision immediately, just pause and take some time to think it through.”

Even when you are not being scammed, decisions taken in a hurry may not be in your best financial interest. So, a buy-immediately pressure tactic is a definite red flag.