Your Financial Future: Beware of COVID-19 scammers
COVID-19 is being used by scammers to steal your personal information.
These have taken many forms. Some are in the form of phishing e-mails that appear to come from The World Health Organization. They try to extract your information by requiring you to log into a fake alert. WHO has responded that they never require any log in to access their information.
There have been several scams associated with contract tracing. One reported on television had the station run a test. They contacted some friends of a co-worker and told them that they had been exposed to the virus. They asked them to provide their date of birth to verify their identity. If they provided that, they were asked for their Social Security number. Many people provided all of this information. Then they were than told that this was an experiment and no contract tracer would ever ask these questions. People were surprised how easily they gave up this information.
Scammers are very good at sounding legitimate. People let down their guard when they hear something serious like potentially being exposed to the coronavirus. You must be careful all the time. Many people have gotten call from people claiming to be the IRS. They say you owe taxes and must send in pre-paid debt cards right away or the police will come and arrest you.
The IRS does not call on the telephone. They send a series of letters about their concerns. The police do not arrest anyone for the IRS, they will never ask to be paid in pre-paid debt cards and you will not be going to jail for a late payment. Yet these scams work, because criminals keep using them. There is another one where the call claims to be the Social Security Administration and they have notified some fraudulent activity on your SS account. If you do not call immediately, they are going to stop your Social Security checks. This is a scam. Crooks can use official looking logos and telephone numbers to try and steal your money.
I have gotten a number of e-mails from different banks claiming there is a problem with my account. The real problem is I do not have an account at these banks. If the scammers get lucky, they may guess my real bank or some people are just hoping they have a bank account they do not know about. Be careful. I have also received bogus e-mails from a company claiming to be 鈥渨indows defender.鈥� They claim my subscription is about to end and they will be charging me $299 soon. I should click on their e-mail if I want to discontinue. I have never had this service and it is an easy possibility that someone owns a windows device. Be careful.
I also know someone whose Pay Pal account has been hacked. Thousands of dollars have been pulled out of his checking account through the debt card attached to Pay Pal. While he will probably recover this money, I always suggest you use a credit card instead of a debit card when shopping on line. Both types of payment options often have similar consumer protection, but if an incident needs resolved, it is the bank蘑菇视频 money and not yours tied up.
You must always be on guard all of the rime. Protect your information and it will save a lot of frustration later.
Your Financial Future is written by certified financial planner Gary W. Boatman, MBA and CFP, who also wrote the book, 鈥淵our Financial Compass: Safe Passage Through The Turbulent Waters of Taxes, Income Planning and Market Volatility.鈥� If there is an area that you would like to see discussed in the column, send your suggestions to gary@BoatmanWealthManagement.com.