Before sending money or sharing account details in response to any unexpected request, describe the situation out loud to one person who is not involved, because scams depend on the target deciding alone.

How to do it

1. 1Choose your person in advance: a relative, friend, neighbor, or colleague who will pick up the phone and who has no stake in the transaction. Tell them they are your check, and offer to be theirs.
2. 2Adopt a personal rule with a threshold: no unexpected payment, investment, or transfer above an amount you set goes out until you have told that person the whole story, including the parts that feel embarrassing.
3. 3Say it out loud from the beginning: who contacted you, what they said would happen, what they want you to do, and how they want to be paid. Many people hear the problem themselves halfway through the telling.
4. 4Treat any instruction to keep the matter secret ("do not tell your family", "the bank staff may be in on it", "this is a confidential investigation", "people will not understand us") as the strongest reason to tell someone immediately.
5. 5If nobody is available, call your bank's fraud line on the number on your card, or a consumer helpline, and describe it to them. A stranger with no stake is better than nobody.
6. 6In a business, the equivalent is dual authorization: no single employee can both receive a payment instruction and release the funds.

When to use it

• •Someone you have not met in person asks for money, an investment, or help moving funds.
• •A caller creates an emergency and a deadline and asks you to stay on the line while you go to the bank or the store.
• •You notice you are reluctant to mention a payment or a new relationship to people who know you well.
• •An opportunity is described as exclusive, time-limited, or something other people "would not understand".

Counters

Evidence and how strong it is

The best direct evidence is observational. A 2019 study by the FINRA Investor Education Foundation, the BBB Institute for Marketplace Trust, and the Stanford Center on Longevity surveyed more than a thousand people who had reported scams and compared those who lost money with those who did not; people who engaged with a scammer but had someone to discuss the offer with were substantially less likely to lose money, and social isolation was associated with victimization. This matches how fraud is built: practitioner accounts (Hadnagy 2018) and law-enforcement guidance describe secrecy as a standard ingredient because a third party who is not under the emotional pressure of the call sees the pattern quickly. It also fits the general finding that arousal narrows attention and that decisions made in a "hot" state differ from those made calmly (Loewenstein 2005); an outside listener is in the cold state by default. Evidence strength: observational survey data plus practitioner and regulator consensus. The survey cannot show causation (people who consult others may differ in other ways), and no randomized trial of a tell-someone rule has been run.

1. DeLiema, M., Fletcher, E., Kieffer, C. N., Mottola, G. R., Pessanha, R., & Trumpower, M. (2019). Exposed to Scams: What Separates Victims from Non-Victims?. FINRA Investor Education Foundation, BBB Institute for Marketplace Trust, and Stanford Center on Longevity
   Survey finding that people who had someone to discuss a scam offer with were less likely to lose money, and that isolation was associated with victimization.
2. Hadnagy, C. (2018). Social Engineering: The Science of Human Hacking (2nd ed.). Wiley
   Practitioner account of why social-engineering pretexts work to keep the target from consulting anyone else.
3. Loewenstein, G. (2005). Hot-cold empathy gaps and medical decision making. Health Psychology, 24(4, Suppl.), S49-S56
   The general finding that decisions made under emotional arousal differ from those made in a calm state, which is the gap an uninvolved listener fills.