Scams and Hoaxes

In my life i have heard and seen many different types of scams but i never thought that it would happen to somebody that I knew. One day out of the blue when talking with my mom she mentioned that my grandfather had fallen for a scam. It was a email coming from an unknown source claiming to be from Apple. She told me that the email claimed that my grandparents were locked out of their Apple ID accounts and that they each had to pay $100 to get back in. They would later pay the fee with a credit card and would lose all of the information to the scam giving the scammer full access to their credit cards . This would have me wondering, what ways can you determine if something is a scam? Firstly you can determine the source of emails from the email address at the top of the letter commonly having the symbol @. If the email address does not have the name of the company, person or organization they claim to be, it is most likely a scam. Lastly if they ask you for money and tell you you need to pay with a credit card or a gift card you should not pay. Tactics like this are used to trick people into Giving away information away to shady figures who abuse ethics in order to have personal gain.