Cybersecurity advice usually means the boring stuff, a strong password, not clicking a weird link. None of that changes after a disaster. What changes is who’s trying to get past it, and how much more convincing they get once your house is damaged, your phone is at four percent, and someone in an official-looking vest is standing on your porch.

According to FEMA’s own fraud guidance, criminals routinely pose as disaster workers to steal personal information, and in some cases file fraudulent assistance applications using names, addresses, and Social Security numbers stolen from actual survivors. The chaos after a storm or wildfire is exactly the environment scammers count on. People are stressed, moving fast, and more likely to hand over information to anyone who sounds official.

How to Tell a Real FEMA Contact From a Fake One

FEMA is specific about this, and it is worth memorizing before you ever need it. Legitimate federal and local disaster workers never ask for money, and FEMA will only call or email you if you contacted them first or already registered for assistance. Real FEMA inspectors carry official identification and will schedule an appointment before showing up, they will not ask for your Social Security number, and they will not demand payment of any kind. If someone claiming to be a FEMA inspector skips any of that, it is a red flag worth acting on. Anyone asking you to climb on a roof or enter a crawl space with them is also outside normal FEMA procedure, and that alone is reason enough to stop and verify.

What to Actually Do If Something Feels Off

If you get a suspicious call, email, or in-person visit, FEMA provides a direct way to check it. Call the FEMA Helpline at 1-800-621-3362 to verify whether contact is legitimate before giving out any information. If you believe you have already been targeted, FEMA’s Disaster Fraud Hotline at 1-866-720-5721 is the right next call, and local law enforcement should know as well. Reporting quickly does more than protect you. It helps flag a pattern before the same scammer works through the rest of your neighborhood.

The Charity and Contractor Angle

FEMA impersonation gets most of the attention, but fake charities and unlicensed contractors follow the exact same playbook after a disaster. High-pressure requests for donations, contractors who show up unsolicited and want payment before any work begins, rental listings for properties that do not exist, all of it preys on the same urgency. I treat any unsolicited offer of help that involves money changing hands with the same suspicion I would treat a fake FEMA call, verify first, act second.

Digital Habits Worth Building Now

Weak, reused passwords and accounts without two-factor authentication turn a single phishing email into access across every account tied to it, including bank accounts, email, and anything else sharing that same weak password. I make sure banking and email accounts have two-factor authentication turned on well before hurricane season starts, since that is exactly the kind of housekeeping nobody wants to deal with while also dealing with storm damage.

Protecting Your Data Before the Crisis Hits

None of this works well if you are figuring it out for the first time mid-disaster. I think about data protection here the same way I think about a bug-out bag, prepared ahead of time, not assembled under stress.

• Keep copies of critical documents, insurance policies, IDs, account numbers, stored somewhere secure and accessible without internet
• Know your actual FEMA registration status ahead of time if you have ever applied
• Save the real FEMA Helpline and Disaster Fraud Hotline numbers somewhere you will actually have them during an outage
• Talk to older or more vulnerable family members ahead of time about what a real disaster worker will and will not ask for
• Set a household rule that no one gives out financial information over the phone without verifying first

Keeping a Level Head When Everything Feels Urgent

Scammers rely on is urgency. Act now, sign this, give us your information before help disappears. A real relief worker is never in that kind of hurry, and slowing down to verify costs you nothing when the offer is genuine. Building that pause into your habits ahead of time, before you are standing in a damaged living room trying to figure out what to do next, is the actual defense here.