How to Become Safer Online: the five signs of a scam, and the checks that protect your family. A cybersecurity awareness guide in large print, for families, libraries and educators, with a short glossary of the terms it uses.
UtilForge.org exists to help make a safer online world for all people, by sharing how scams work and by giving people free checks to use on their own phones. This book brings the knowledge first, then the measures, then how to pass both on.
The short answer. Most scams follow five steps: someone pretends to be a person or company you trust, brings you a problem or a prize, puts you under pressure, asks you to keep it private, and asks you to pay in a way that is hard to reverse. Most scams use several of them. Spot any one, and the rule is the same: stop, and check first. This book explains each step, shows the free check at UtilForge.org for each of the scams of 2026, and includes a suggested forty-five-minute session plan for a kitchen table or a community room.
Get the book by email, with every revised edition. Online safety changes month by month, so the book is revised as the scams change. Enter any amount from $0 and your email address, and each new edition arrives in your inbox as it comes out. What readers choose to pay helps keep UtilForge going.
Or download the PDF straight away (0.8 MB), and print the five steps card (one page).
Free to copy
This book may be printed, photocopied, handed out and shared by anyone, for any number of people, as long as it is shared whole and unchanged, and nobody is charged more than the cost of printing it. Libraries, care homes, colleges, community groups, banks, employers and families are welcome to do so without asking.
To make that permission formal, the book is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0): copy it and share it freely, credit UtilForge.org, do not sell it, and do not change it.
It is set in 16-point type so that it can be read without strain and photocopied without loss. The interior is 6 by 9 inches; it also prints well on A4 or Letter paper.
What is in it
- Part One, the playbook: the five signs, one chapter each, with the real result from a UtilForge check for a real message.
- Part Two, the scams of 2026: the text that says you owe something, the message from “a family member on a new number”, the job that asks you to pay first, the friend who wants to help you invest, the voice on the phone, and the stranger who offers your money back.
- Part Three, for educators: how people really get help, a forty-five minute session plan, the family safe word, an afternoon to set up a phone together, and what to say and never say to someone who has nearly been caught.
- Part Four, if it has already happened: the first phone call, what to do by how you paid, where to report it country by country, and the second scam.
- Part Five, four more habits (not scams): the black box that was not really black, what you paste into an artificial intelligence, the words you cannot see (hidden instructions and invisible characters in what you ask an assistant to read), and the VPN: what it protects, the trouble with free VPNs, and when to switch it off.
- Eight short stories, a cut-out card of the five steps, a short glossary of the terms the book uses (phishing, deepfake, two-step login and others, in plain English), and every source.
For libraries, community groups and workplaces
The session plan in Part Three is also online at utilforge.org/clinics, with printable cards. If you run a session, UtilForge would be glad to hear afterwards what confused people, so that the checks and the book can be improved. Write to support@utilforge.org.
A printed paperback edition at the cost of printing is being prepared. This page will carry the link when it is available.
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You can also write to UtilForge directly, especially if something in the book helped you or needs correcting. UtilForge will only quote your words on this site if you say it may.
Facts and sources. Every figure in the book carries its source. Scams change; the five steps do not. Corrections are welcome at the address above.
UtilForge.org is a registered 2026 Champion of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, the campaign led by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the National Cybersecurity Alliance. This book is our contribution to the campaign.