The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is warning people about scammers posing as your Cable or Internet company contacting you offering to lower your monthly bill in exchange for a fee.  According to the FTC, many of these scammers are posing as Spectrum.  The scammers are contacting people by phone, recorded robocalls or text messages with the phony offers to reduce your bill.  In order to qualify for the monthly payment reduction, you are told that you need to prepay a part of your bill using gift cards as the method of payment.  Gift cards are a favorite method of payment for scammers because they are anonymous and impossible to get back once you have provided the numbers to the scammer.  No legitimate business ever asks for payment by way of a gift card so anytime you are asked to make a payment through gift cards, you can be sure it is a scam.

TIPS

Even if your Caller ID indicates that a call is from a legitimate company, such as Spectrum, you cannot trust it to be actually from the legitimate company.  Using a technique called “spoofing” can trick your Caller ID to make a call appear legitimate when it is not.

No legitimate companies asks for payment by gift cards for business purposes.  Only scammers do so if you are asked to make a payment by gift cards in order to qualify for a lower Internet or cable bill, you can be sure it is a scam.

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