October is Breast Cancer Awareness month and scammers are taking full advantage of the increased attention to this disease which is diagnosed in more than 200,000 women each year.   Recently, I received a telephone call from a telemarketer seeking a contribution to a breast cancer charity or at least that is what she said.  Even if you are on the federal Do-Not-Call List, the law permits charities and politicians to contact you.  However, whenever you receive a telephone call, you can never be sure who is really calling you.  Even if your Caller ID indicates that the call you are getting is coming from a charity the name of which you recognize, the call actually may be from a scammer using a technique called Spoofing to make it appear that the call is legitimate when it is not.  The truth is that the call you receive may or may not be from a legitimate charity or a telemarketer on behalf of a legitimate charity and you can’t tell who is really on the other end of the line.
Other Breast Cancer Awareness month scams involve the pink ribbon often used as a symbol of breast cancer awareness. The pink ribbon symbol is not trademarked and may be put on products that can lead you to believe that the sale of the particular product is tied to the company’s monetary contribution to legitimate breast cancer organizations when, in fact, there may be no contribution or a very limited contribution being made by the company.
TIPS
When you receive such a call from a telemarketer or someone purporting to represent a charity, if you are interested in the particular charity, the best thing you can do is just to ask them to send you written material.  Do not provide your credit card number over the phone to anyone who calls you because you cannot be sure that they are legitimate.   Also, as I have warned you in the past, many phony charities have names that are similar to real charities so it is always a good idea to investigate a charity before you make a charitable contribution.  In addition, when you receive a charitable solicitation telephone call from a telemarketer, the telemarketer is generally being paid a commission for the money he or she collects.  Thus, your contribution to the charity is diluted by the amount that goes to the telemarketer and as Jerry Seinfeld would say, “not that there is anything wrong with that.”    However, if you really want to make your charitable contribution go farther, you will  be  better served by first checking out the particular charity at http://www.charitynavigator.org where you can find out not only if the particular charity is legitimate, but also how much of your contribution goes toward administrative costs and how much actually goes toward the charity’s charitable purposes.  Then you can make your contribution directly to the charity without any amount being deducted for fund raising expenses.
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