According to the old saying, “no good deed goes unpunished” and this phrase could apply to the ALS Bucket Challenge, which has been taking the country by storm.  As everyone knows by now, people are dousing themselves with buckets of icy water as part of a national fund raising effort to support the fight against amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS, which is also commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.  We have all seen videos online and on television showing various people doing the challenge in entertaining and unusual ways.  Many celebrities and politicians have also been caught up in this viral campaign.  Unfortunately, as with anything that captures the public’s imagination, the Ice Bucket Challenge has also captured the imagination of scam artists, the only criminals we refer to as artists who are sending emails and text messages that purport to provide links to videos of particularly enticing and entertaining examples of the Ice Bucket Challenge, such as purported videos of popular celebrities, politicians, or athletes being dowsed, but, in fact are links that when clicked upon will download keystroke logging malware that will steal all of the personal information from your computer and use it to make you a victim of identity theft.

Another Ice Bucket Challenge related scam relates to websites or links for you to click on in order to make a charitable contribution.  Scammers have been busy setting up phony ALS charities and soliciting online and through telemarketing for phony ALS charities where your contribution will not go to ALS research and prevention, but rather to line the pockets of a scammer.

TIPS

In regard to avoiding the Ice Bucket Challenge video scams, my advice is the same as always, which is to never click on links in emails or in text messages unless you are absolutely sure that they are legitimate.  Even if they appear to come from a real friend of yours, you cannot be sure that your friend’s email account had not been hacked by a scammer sending you a tainted text or email.

As for avoiding the ALS charitable contribution scams, my advice is the same in regard to all charitable solicitations which is that whenever you are contacted by phone, mail, email, text message or any other form of communication, you can never be sure that the sender is actually from a legitimate charity.  In addition, many phony charities have names that are quite similar to legitimate charities and you can be fooled into giving a contribution to a scammer.  The first thing you should do before making any charitable contribution is to first check out the charity at http://www.charitynavigator.org where you first can find out whether or not the charity is actually legitimate.  Charitynavigator.org also provides information as to how much of the particular charities contributions go toward its charitable purposes and how much goes toward its salaries and administrative costs.  Once you have ascertained that a charity is legitimate, you should go online to the charity’s website to make your contribution directly.  In the case of the ALS Association, its website is http://www.alsa.org/