A word only your family knows

Your bank has a password. Your family doesn't.

That's the gap the current wave of scams walks through. Someone calls sounding exactly like your son, your daughter, your grandchild — and you have no way to test it, because you've never needed one before. A few seconds of their voice from anywhere online is enough to make the copy convincing.

A safe word closes that gap completely, and it costs nothing.

How to choose one

The word has to be something a stranger could not find and could not guess.

• Not a pet's name, a birthday, a street you lived on, a school, a maiden name. All of that is on the internet or guessable.
• Good: a private joke, something odd that happened on a holiday, a nonsense word your kid invented, the name of a thing only the four of you would remember.
• One word or two. Easy to say down a bad phone line, hard to type into a search bar.

How to use it

Anyone who calls asking for money, a code, or a payment, in a hurry, gets asked for the word. A real relative will laugh and say it. A scammer will do one of three things: claim they can't hear you, get angry, or hang up. All three are your answer.

Make the card

Type your word below and print it. Put one by the phone, and give one to anyone in your family who might get the call — that usually means the oldest and the youngest.

One more thing worth agreeing on

Pick a second word that means I'm being made to say this. If someone is standing over your daughter while she calls you, the second word is how she tells you without saying it. You hope never to use it. It takes ten seconds to agree on.