How to Spot a Scam Aimed at Your Child

Most parents can spot a scam aimed at themselves. A message from an unknown number claiming to be your bank, a delivery fee for a parcel you never ordered, an urgent request from a colleague. The shapes are familiar.

Scams aimed at children are different, and that is why they work. They do not ask for bank details. They offer the things children actually want.

What they look like

The most common approach is free game currency. Coins, gems, skins, rare items, all offered in exchange for a login, a code, or verifying an account. The pitch usually includes the detail that a friend already tried it and it worked.

Giveaways and follower boosts work the same way. Enter to win, or grow your following fast, in return for linking an account or handing over a password.

Then there is the generous stranger. Someone offers to gift an expensive item, then asks for account access or a code or a small favour to complete the trade. This one shades into more serious territory and deserves your attention when you hear about it.

Account helpers are a variation. Someone in a game offers to fix or upgrade an account if the child hands over a login. The account is then taken, and it is often used to target the child's friends, which is why a message from a friend can be the least trustworthy of all.

And underneath several of these sits the code request. A child is asked to read out or forward a code that has just arrived on their phone. That code is frequently the last thing standing between someone and the account.

Why children fall for them

Not naivety. Incentive.

What is being offered is something they genuinely want, from a source that looks like their peers, in a space where trades and gifts are completely normal. The scam is not strange in that context. It looks like an ordinary transaction.

It helps to remember this before reacting. A child who accepted a bad trade was not being foolish. They were doing the thing their whole online world is built around.

The three rules

Teach these in this order.

Nothing valuable is free and urgent at the same time. If something is being given away, and it has to be right now, and there is a reason not to check with anyone, that combination is the scam. Any one of those on its own is worth a pause. All three together is not a coincidence.

Never give a password or a code to anyone. Ever. Including a friend. No legitimate service and no real person needs it. This rule has to be absolute, because the moment it has exceptions, a convincing story becomes one.

If you did, tell immediately. Speed matters more than blame. And the second half of that sentence is what makes the first half possible, which brings us to the part that matters most.

What to do if it already happened

Change the password, and change it anywhere else that password was used. Turn on two-step verification. Check the account's recovery email and phone, because whoever got in often changes those first so the real owner cannot get back.

Then, and this is the part that determines whether you hear about it next time: thank them for telling you.

Even if they broke a rule to get there. Even if you are frustrated. A child who fears the reaction hides it, and hiding is what turns a small problem into a large one. Any conversation about rules is a separate conversation, on a different day.

One question to ask tonight

Not an interrogation. Just, casually: has anyone in your game ever offered you free stuff?

You will almost certainly learn something.