Scams and Frauds

[Grumpy]

Several agencies (FTC, BBB, etc) have warned that phone, mail and internet scams and frauds are on the raise because of the poor economy and the holiday season. Some things to be especially watchful for are:

DO NOT CLICK ON OR REPLY TO emails that promise you money for helping to transfer large sums of money and other offers that seem too good to be true. The reason some people keep getting these offers is because when you reply to the scam, even to tell them off and you know its a scam, they then know they have a valid email address and will keep trying until they find something you may fall for. JUST DELETE THEM.

BEWARE OF SEEMINLY VALID POP-UPS when shopping on-line. Read everything before you hit OK or whatever. Many scammers use valid sites to run their scams to get you to authorize payments to a scammer when you think you are just trying to buy something you wanted.

NEVER ANSWER AN EMAIL FROM YOUR BANK, CREDIT UNION, OR CREDIT CARD COMPANY no matter how valid or urgent it may seem be. If you get something from one of these companies, do not answer them but close it out and go to your FAVORITES and bring the company up they way you would if you wanted to contact them. Almost always, you will find that they did not try to contact you but a scammer did.

BUYER BEWARE has never been truer than it is on the Internet. I am going to stick this at the top until after New Years but remember it always.

Grumpy