With the new year the scammers are out with a new batch of scams designed to take your money or your personal and financial information. They contact you by email, text message, or phone. They can easily disguise their caller ID, so don’t believe what you see.
They can make an email screen look like it comes from your bank by grabbing logos and text from the true bank site. If they give you a phone number to call, DO NOT CALL THAT NUMBER. Look up the phone number of your bank and call them.
If you receive an email with a link DO NOT CLICK THAT LINK. It is an easy way for a scammer to access your personal or financial information, or to install malware on your computer. If the email comes from a friend, it still may contain some malware that your friend got on his computer. The safe thing is to delete that email. You can tell your friend that you don’t open any links you get by email.
NO LEGITIMATE COMPANY OR GOVERNMENT AGENCY ACCEPTS GIFT CARDS AS PAYMENT. Anyone that requests such payment is a scammer. If by phone immediately hang up. If by email immediately delete the email.
If someone calls you and they say they are from Microsoft or Apple, to tell you that they have noticed there is a problem with your computer you should immediately hang up. THERE IS NO WAY THEY COULD KNOW THAT and they will never call you.
If you receive any of these communications from scammers, please feel free to be as loud, rude and obnoxious as you want.
