Identity theft was the top complaint reported to the FTC in the last year, beating out even debt collectors. From CNN:

There’s no doubt it’s a scary situation when it happens. If a criminal gets his hands on some personal information, it can wreak havoc on your life. You might find mysterious charges on your credit card. Or a thief could file a tax return in your name, getting a bogus refund before you even know it.

None of this is a surprise. Massive data breaches that could lead to identity theft keep coming and, most recently, hackers hit insurance giant Anthem, stealing information on tens of millions of customers.

Hackers are almost always one step ahead of cybersecurity. And besides, there’s enough low-hanging fruit in the form of businesses that have your personal information on file, but don’t even bother to invest in top-of-the-line security to safeguard it. If you haven’t had your identity stolen yet, you probably will. Identity theft is increasingly becoming just another part of modern life that people will have to deal with.

While con artists sometimes impersonate a friend or family member asking for money, more complaints are about fraudsters claiming to be a government official, like an IRS agent.

Last year, the FTC got nearly 160,000 such complaints, or 100,000 more than in 2013.

The bad guys may call to say taxes are owed, getting the unknowing consumer to send them money.

The con may know the last four digits of your Social Security number and threaten arrest if you don’t pay up, but consumers should be suspicious if this ever happens.

If anyone ever calls you asking for money, assume it’s a scam. Hang up on them, and then call the business they claim to be. 

For example, if you get a call from someone claiming to be from your credit card company and they ask you for personal information “to verify your identity,” this is often a scam. Hang up, and call the number on the back of your card. If they really did need to talk to you, you can proceed confident that it is not a scam. And if they weren’t, then you know it was a scam.

Same thing for the IRS, the electric company, or any other phone call you receive from someone you do business with. Caller ID is easy to spoof, so don’t rely on that. Hang up and call the real phone number of the company (by looking it up for yourself; do not rely on a phone number given to you by the people who just called you!), and proceed from there.