Posted by Annie in Twain Harte News on October 13, 2015
If life wasn’t hard enough these days, beware the scam artist. Have you had the call yet? The one where Microsoft is calling you, telling YOU that your computer has a virus. The first thing that should give it away is the thick accent of the person on the other end of the telephone.
The Department of Veterans Affairs is warning veterans not to give credit card numbers over the phone to callers claiming to update VA prescription information.
But really? Does PG&E call you at home, not unless they have scheduled an outage and even then, it’s an automated recording, not a real person. They just don’t call and ask for money. Period. We’ve had several clients and friends who have endured the humiliation, the financial lost and the frustration of being ripped of for hundreds, even thousands of dollars.
We had another friend, just a couple days ago, who had people stop by her house, claimed to need to use the bathroom and ripped off all her credit cards and cash. These are not nice people. This is a good community to pull this kind of crap because we have an abundance of senior citizens living here.
For Piece of Mind — Update Service Subscription
Please don’t fall for these scams. Shawn will be happy to check out your system at no charge to you. Shawn’s update service is a wonderful way to stay on top of it all. He maintains your system for you. Let’s you know of vulnerabilities and if you do get a virus, he’ll remove it for free.
In the Twain Harte area, we have seen an increase in the amount of scams being pulled off. Heck, we’ve even had the FBI wandering around looking for counterfeit $100 bills.
For your safety:
- Do not let anyone in your home. Answer the door with your phone or gun in hand, call 911 if you feel uneasy.
- If you get a call, just hang up. You can always call the company back to be sure who you are dealing with. Go ahead, call Microsoft. 🙂 Never give out your credit card, social security or birth date over the phone.
- Use cash when ever possible. We always use cash at new stores, taco trucks, cigarette stores because of the high probability of credit card skimmers and fraud. Even Target had their system hacked and 40 million customer had their data stolen.
Dow Jones Hit In Data Breach, Credit Card Info For 3,500 Customers Possibly Compromised — While contact info was the target of the breach, Lewis admits that information on up to 3,500 payment card accounts may have been compromised, “although we have discovered no direct evidence that information was stolen.” [Read more…]
- Never use your debt card when you can use a credit card, credit cards are limited in the amount of damages you can suffer, debt cards are not.
Be safe, and smart. Do be the victim of a scammer this year. We have to be cautious at every turn.
