- There are many scams, unwanted solicitations, and phishing schemes.
- They can be found on the web, come in your email, your mail, and on the phone, even to your door. Many times they come from companies or individuals you haven’t heard of. Sometimes they are from well known companies and organizations.
- My personal Examples of unknown company:
- Non-local Advertising Companies: I received a phone call saying it was from Crow Wing County. Turned out it was a company that called itself Universal Adcom/ Premier Impressions calling from another state. I fell for this. There was an actual product, but there was limited distribution, so there were no results. They were very hard to deal with and very pushy. It was hard to cancel and they kept calling me many times after canceling.
- I dealt with several other non-local advertising companies that had similar situations and no results, however they were easy to cancel. I will no longer deal with them.
- Things I learned:
- Beware when caller id is blocked.
- Don’t answer or answer and be very cautious.
- Beware of businesses that you haven’t heard of and are not local.
- Don’t do a deal with someone that forces a deal done the same day.
- Say no thanks Hang up.
- If they call back consider calling the police.
- My personal example of problems from well known companies/organizations:
- The Better Business Bureau in the Twin Cities solicited me about joining. I had a person from there that said I needed to join telling me a story about how someone got killed. There was some miscommunication that she thought I had an employee, so she also quoted me a higher price to join. She kept calling me to join later a couple times. Later another nicer person from there called about joining but the bad thing from before and the price still high made it a no go.
- Beware of Introductory prices for Internet, Cable and Telephone. Many times bills go up in price, sometimes more than double.
- Beware of Free (especially mail offers)
- Beware of contracts for Internet, Cable mobile/land line phone. Sometimes a may be cheaper to pay out of a mobile phone contract then to continue with that company. Many times people buy more phone minutes than they actually use, costing them money.
- Internet Scams:
- Fake antiviruses, Fake Antispyware. Utilities that aren’t needed.
- File sharing – people share files that are actually trojans, and spyware that may look like music or video
- Work at home, and other easy money – There actually are some people that work at home, but there are many schemes on the internet, in newspapers, and on TV
- Beware of the content you go to: Porn Sites and Illegal file sharing sites are some examples of sites that cause more trouble than just what they are.
- Email/mail/phone/text scams:
- Taking care of money/Nigerian/out of country letter
- Lottery winning
- Bank account frozen/verifications – Banks hardly ever do this. These are almost always scams.
- Certain forwards from people you know may also be scams.
- Fake invoices/bills
- Avoid publicly posting/submitting personal information, if possible. Telephone numbers and addresses can be used to send solicitations. Social Security number, and credit/debit card/bank number be very careful who you give to and if given on the internet make sure it is a secure connection. Birth date with year should be careful too.
- Make sure your email provider/email program has a good spam and phishing filter.
- Look at web addresses and names carefully
- Look for misspellings in names, addresses and content
- Be very careful about meeting someone. If you do decide to meet, consider meeting in a public place.
There will be more on this topic in the future.