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, 165 pages, 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. As a registered 2026 Champion of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, the campaign led by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the National Cybersecurity Alliance, we do that by sharing how scams work and by giving people free checks to use on their own phones. This book is our contribution to the campaign: the knowledge first, then the measures, then how to pass both on.
The short answer. Scams are built from 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 ends with a forty-five minute session anyone can run at a kitchen table or in a community room.
Download the book (PDF, 0.5 MB) The five steps card (PDF, 1 page)
Pay what you want, and get every new edition. Choose any amount from $0 and the book arrives by email, with the revised editions sent to you as they come out. What readers pay keeps the UtilForge checks running.
Pay what you want
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.
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, 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, three more habits (not scams): the black box that was not really black, what you paste into an artificial intelligence, and the words you cannot see: hidden instructions and invisible characters in what you ask an assistant to read.
- 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, each read at the source on 18 October 2026.
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.
Facts and dates. The facts in the book were checked in October 2026 and every figure carries its source. Scams change; the five steps do not. This is the first edition, revised on 18 and 19 October 2026 after a line-by-line check of 119 of its claims against their sources, and corrections are welcome at the address above.