As we have seen far too well during the Coronavirus pandemic, scammers are quite capable of taking whatever is happening in society and turning it into an opportunity to scam people.  Natural disasters such as hurricanes and wildfires are taken advantage of by scammers in a variety of ways and now we are seeing scammers taking advantage of the Russian invasion of Ukraine to fashion a variety of scams.

You may be receiving phone calls, emails or text messages seeking contributions to charities that purport to be helping the people of Ukraine, but unfortunately, whenever you receive a phone call, text message or email, you can never be sure that the caller is legitimate.

Charities are not subject to the federal Do Not Call List so even if you are signed up for the federal Do Not Call List, legitimate charities are able to contact you by phone. The problem is that whenever you are get a phone call, you can never be sure as to who is really calling you so you may be contacted either by a fake charity or a scammer posing as a legitimate charity. Using a technique called spoofing, the scammers can manipulate your Caller ID to make it appear that the call is coming from a legitimate charity when it is not. Similarly, when you are solicited for a charitable contribution by email or text message you cannot be sure as to whether the person contacting you is legitimate or not.

In addition to charity scams related to the invasion, you can expect to receive emails, text messages and social media posts that purport to provide important information about the Russian invasion.  These communications may require you to click on links to obtain the information or videos.  Unfortunately, if you do click on these links you may end up downloading dangerous malware on to your phone or computer.  Never click on links from sources that you have not verified as legitimate.  As for news and information about the war in Ukraine, the best thing to do is to limit your sources to respected, legitimate news sources with which you are familiar.

TIPS

Never provide credit card information over the phone to anyone whom you have not called or in response to an email or text message. Before you give to any charity, you should check out the charity with http://www.charitynavigator.org where you can learn whether or not the charity itself is a scam. You can also see how much of the money that the legitimate charity collects actually goes toward its charitable purposes and how much it uses for fund raising and administrative costs.  Charitynavigator.org has a list of specific highly-rated charities that they recommend if you wish to assist the people of Ukraine.  Among the highly rated charities are Global Giving, Save the Children and the Center for Disaster Philanthropy.   For a full list and descriptions of these charities and others that are good choices for your charitable gifts to help the people of the Ukraine, use this link. https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&cpid=9366

For those of you receiving the Scam of the day through an email, I just want to remind you that if you want to see the ever increasing list of Coronavirus scams go to the first page of the http://www.scamicide.com website and click on the tab at the top of the page that indicates “Coronavirus Scams.”  Scamicide was cited by the New York Times as one of three top sources for information about Coronavirus related scams.

If you are not a subscriber to Scamicide.com and would like to receive free daily emails with the Scam of the day, all you need to do is to go to the bottom of the initial page of http://www.scamicide.com and type in your email where it states “Sign up for this blog.”