Scams

 

If someone contacts you by phone, by letter, or by email, and asks for

  • personal information
  • financial information
  • insists on immediate payment
  • attempts to frighten you with the threat of a problem or virus on your computer

Then someone is attempting to scam you.


Ignore the letter. Ignore the email. Hang up the phone.
If there's a threatening message on your computer screen that you can't close, reboot.
Don't let anyone you don't know take remote control of your computer.

 

Be Alert

 

                                 Be Conscientious

 

Be Suspicious

 

Here is a Freedom Village administration publication of December 2024 on the subject of scams:

iPad/iPhone users click here.

 

 

 

If you think you are being scammed, you probably are.

 

 Scam-Detector is a good source about the current scams in circulation.
To go to their website, click or tap here.

 For a New York Times article on the IRS Scam, click or tap here.

 

 New Scam: If you get a phone call from the Office of the Inspector General or
Social Security threatening legal action, and leaving a phone number, ignore it.
It's a scam. For more information, click or tap here.

 

Millennials Increasingly Duped by Tech Support Scams

  • By Don Reisinger
  • October 19, 2016 02:16pm EST

Fifty percent of those who were duped by customer-service scams last year were millennials, Microsoft finds.

Chances are, you've been targeted by a tech support scam, but did you fall for it?

According to a report from Microsoft, two-thirds of people have experienced a tech support scam in the last year. One in five downloaded software, visited a scam website, or handed over financial data to fraudsters; 1 in 10 lost money.

And while older tech users are still falling victim to these scams, the report included a surprising revelation: 50 percent of those who were duped were (the usual tech-savvy) millennials ages of 18 and 34.

"The 'old school' method of tech support scams follows an all-too-common pattern: fraudster calls a senior citizen at home claiming to have a relationship with a reputable company; misrepresents the existence of malware, computer viruses or other technical problems on a personal computer; and proceeds to sell the senior citizen unnecessary tech support for a fee," Courtney Gregoire, senior attorney in Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit, said in a statement.

But just because you spend much of your time on the Web doesn't mean you're immune to scams. "By leveraging pop-ups, unsolicited email and scam websites as additional entry points for scams, fraudsters are reaching a broader number of people including younger than expected victims," Gregoire says.

Data was collected this summer from respondents in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Singapore, South Africa, the UK, and US.

Microsoft found that victims over 65 are most often scammed via phone (44 percent unsolicited call, 38 percent pop-up or online ad, 33 percent unsolicited email, and 26 percent redirected to website). In contrast, millennials are more likely to have been redirected to a fraudulent website (50 percent) or duped by a pop-up advertisement (59 percent) as compared to receiving an unsolicited call (26 percent).

In the US alone, 20 percent have lost money to scams, though 92 percent recovered at least some of those funds. People in China and India, on the other hand, were only able to recover some money in 58 percent and 67 percent of cases, respectively.