Today’s Scam of the day is the third in a series of Scams of the day dealing with election related scams.
A common election time scam involves a call purportedly from your city or town clerk informing you that you need to re-register or you will be removed from the voting lists. You are then told that you can re-register over the phone merely by providing some personal information, such as your Social Security number. The truth is that you will not be called by your city or town clerk and told that you need to re-register and voter registration is not done by phone.
Another common election related scam deals with political polls. Political polls have been a major part of our election process for many years. Generally, people are contacted by telephone to answer questions about the candidates and their policies. Because it is so common at this time of year to be called by a political pollster, scammers call posing as pollsters in an effort to trick their victims into providing information that can be used for purposes of identity theft. Often they will dangle the reward of a gift card or other prize to lure people into participating in the scam poll. Again spoofing can be used to make the call appear legitimate.
TIPS
In regard to the first scam, as I indicated above, you will not be called by your city or town clerk and told that you need to re-register and voter registration is not done by phone. Sometimes scammers will even ask for a payment for registering by phone. The truth is that there is no charge for registering to vote.
As for political poll scams, legitimate pollsters do not offer prizes or other compensation for participating in their polls. They also will never ask for personal information such as your Social Security number, credit card number or banking information. Anyone posing as a pollster asking for such information is a scammer and you should hang up immediately.
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