Scam of the Day
Scam of the day – April 30, 2025 – FTC Issues Warning About Text Message Job Scams
Job scams are fertile ground for scammers. I have written about many forms that these scams take. Recently the Federal Trade Commission issued a warning about phony job offers being sent to people in text messages. While some job scams that may appear on legitimate sites such as monster.com or LinkedIn may be harder to determine as scams, this text message job offer is easier to recognize as a scam because like lottery scams where you are told you have won a lottery you never enterred, in this instance you are being offered a job that you never applied for. In both cases this is always a scam.
The text message may appear to be legitimate because the phone number from which it is being sent can be confirmed to be that of a legitimate company, however, it is a simple matter for a scammer to “spoof” the telephone number of a legitimate company to make it appear that the call is coming from a telephone number of a legitimate company when, in truth it is coming from a scammer at a different number.
The text message may require personal information including your Social Security number or require you to click on a link to take you to a phony site that will also ask for personal information. Alternatively, merely clicking on the link can download dangerous malware. Personal information provided can lead to identity theft.
TIPS
Unsolicited job offers coming to you by text message are always a scam. If you need further proof, you can always determine if the company purportedly offering you the job is legitimate and contact their HR department to confirm that there was no job offer being made.
As always, it is a good practice to never click on a link in an email or text message unless you have confirmed it is legitimate and never provide personal information in response to a phone call, email or text message unless you have confirmed it is legitimate.
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Scam of the day – April 29, 2025 – Danger of Skimmers on Gas Pump Continues
In 2020 the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a warning about the dangers presented by skimmers on gas pumps. I have warned you about the dangers of skimmers for many years. Skimmers are small electronic devices that are easily installed by an identity thief on gas pumps, ATMs and other card reading devices. The skimmer steals all of the information from old style magnetic strip credit card or debit cards which then enables the identity thief to use that information to access the victim’s credit card or bank account when the skimmer is used on a debit card. Each skimmer can hold information on as many as 2,400 cards.
MasterCard and Visa announced in December of 2016 that the deadline for the installation of EMV chip card readers on gas pumps was being delayed three years to October 1, 2020. This deadline was further delayed due to the Coronavirus pandemic to April 17, 2021 at which time less than half of the gas pumps in the United States complied with the requirement to install EMV chip card readers. And although that deadline has long since passed, due to the cost involved, many gas pumps still are not enabled for your chip credit card.
Wider implementation of the use of EMV chip cards at retail stores where their use has been mandated since 2015 has resulted in a dramatic reduction in data breaches and credit card fraud at retailers using this equipment. EMV chip cards are far safer than the old-style magnetic strip cards. Around the country there has been a dramatic increase in the use of skimmers installed by criminals at gas pumps and while the deadline for gas pumps to install chip readers has passed, many gas pumps still do not use EMV chip card readers and so skimmers at gas pumps continue to be a problem.
Last year, the Aurora, Colorado police department issued a warning that scammers were drilling holes in the contactless payment screens on gas pumps where you can merely scan your credit card with its RFID chip rather than insert it into any card reader. By damaging the contactless payment screen, it becomes inoperable thereby requiring the customer to use the credit card reader on the gas pump where the identity thief had already installed a skimmer to steal your credit card or debit card information.
TIPS
Always look for signs of tampering on any machine you use to swipe your credit card or debit card although the more advanced forms of skimmers are installed in the gas pump’s interior and cannot be detected from an inspection of the outside of the pump. Keys to open the gas pumps to allow the installation of the skimmer are readily available online. If the card inserting mechanism appears loose or in any other way tampered, don’t use it. In regard to the contactless payment screen, if it is not working, there is a high likelihood that it may have been tampered with so in that instance pay for your gas inside the gas station office.
Debit cards, when compromised through a skimmer put the customers at risk of having the bank accounts tied to their cards entirely emptied if the theft is not promptly reported and even if the victim reports the theft immediately, the victim loses access to his or her bank account while the matter is investigated by the bank. Debit cards should not be used for purchases at gas pumps. Instead use your credit card and monitor your account regularly to find out early if you have become a victim of this scam. With a credit card, your liability for fraudulent purchases is limited by law to no more than $50 and I am not aware of any credit card companies that hold their customers responsible for any fraudulent purchases. However, fraudulent debit purchases do not come with the same federal legal protection.
When choosing a particular gas pump, you may wish to pick the pump closest to the building and within the sight line of the attendant. Criminals are less likely to install skimmers in pumps where they could be observed making the illegal installation of a skimmer.
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Scam of the day – April 28, 2025 – New Data Breach Report Shows Data Breaches Getting Worse
Verizon issued its annual data breach report which appears to exemplify my motto that “things aren’t as bad as you think, they are far worse.” Regardless of how diligent you are in protecting your personal information such as your Social Security number, you are only as safe as the myriad of companies, institutions and government agencies with the worse and most vulnerable security practices that have your personal information. The report confirmed 12,195 data breaches last year, an increase of 34% over the previous year.
Most notably supply chain attacks whereby the cybercriminal hacks into a third party that may supply software or services to a company or government agency and uses their access to hack into the primary target company, institution or government agency doubled from last year. An example of such a data breach was the data breach at Hertz that I told you about in April 19th’s Scam of the day. In that instance Customer information for Hertz was compromised in a data breach involving Cleo Communications, a company that is a third party vendor that provides file transfer services for Hertz.
TIPS
One of the best things you can do to protect yourself from data breaches is to not provide your Social Security number to every company that asks for it as an identifier. Your doctor has no need for your Social Security number so whenever possible refuse to provide it.
Freezing your credit is actually something everyone should do. It is free and easy to do. It protects you from someone using your identity to obtain loans or make large purchases even if they have your Social Security number. If you have not already done so, put a credit freeze on your credit reports at all of the major credit reporting agencies. Here are links to each of them with instructions about how to get a credit freeze:
https://www.transunion.com/credit-freeze
https://www.experian.com/freeze/center.html
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Scam of the day – April 27, 2025 – FBI Issues Warning About Imposter Scam
The FBI recently issued a warning about scammers posing as FBI agents working for the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center contacting scam victims offering to help them recover funds lost to scams when their real purpose is to further victimize the victims of previous scams. The phony FBI agents contact their victims in a variety of ways including emails, phone calls, social media or through legitimate support groups for financial scam victims that the scammers infiltrate posing as scam victims themselves.
In some instances the phony FBI agents tell their victims that either they have already recovered funds lost by the victims to financial scams or can help recover those funds. In all cases the phony FBI agents require a payment before funds can be returned to the victim and, of course, they never return anything to the victims. In the case of the scammers joining scam victim support groups they recommend to their targeted victim that they contact the Chief Director of the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint center through Telegram. When the victims contact the phony director, who in recent versions of the scam is called Jaime Quin, they are told that the funds have been recovered, but that the victim needs to provide a payment or provide personal financial information that is used for purposes of identity theft.
TIPS
This scam is easy to avoid. Even if the phone call appears to come from the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, it is a simple matter for a scammer to “spoof” the telephone number of the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center and manipulate your Caller ID to make the call appear legitimate. The truth is that the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center will never contact victims directly through phone calls, emails, social media, mobile apps or support groups and they never charge any fees for returning funds to scam victims nor do they ask for personal financial information. Only scammers do that.
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Scam of the day – April 26, 2025 – Pope Francis Death Scams
Anything in the news that the public is interested in is fodder for scammers. I have warned you many times about scams related to school shootings, natural disasters, the war in Ukraine and many more events that have garnered public interest. Unfortunately, the death of Pope Francis is such an event and scammers have wasted no time launching a myriad of scams with the intention of gathering your personal information and using it to make you a victim of identity theft, luring you into other scams or downloading dangerous malware that can lead to you becoming a victim of identity theft.
Some of these scams start as social media posts that lure you into clicking on links purportedly to take you to news stories about Pope Francis including some posts that claim his death is a hoax. Through the use of artificial intelligence, these posts can appear to be very legitimate. Clicking on the links however can cause you to download dangerous malware. In other instances, the scammers will take you to a site that asks for personal information to be eligible for a gift card giveaway.
TIPS
The rules remain the same, never click on a link in an email, text message or social media post unless you have absolutely confirmed that the link is legitimate. The risk of downloading malware is too great. Even if you have the most up to date security software, it will not protect you from the lastest zero day defects which exploit vulnerabilities that have not yet been discovered.
With so much misinformation out there, it behooves all of us to avoid getting the news through social media posts, but rather use legitimate news sources, such as the New York Times or CNN when looking for accurate reporting of curren events.
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Scam of the day – April 25, 2025 – Be on the Lookout for Student Loan Scams
I have written often about phony student loan debt relief companies and with good reason. More than thirty-eight million Americans have student loans with an outstanding balance of more than 1.4 trillion dollars so it is no surprise that scammers are focusing their attention on these students and former students through scams that falsely promise to provide debt relief. Now, after a five year pause on penalizing student loan borrowers for not making payments, the government instructed loan servicers to start reporting late payers to credit bureaus which is resulting in millions of student loan borrowers having their important credit scores drop dramatically. Government figures indicate that two thirds of student loan borrowers are late or behind in their payments and this presents a dire situation to which scammers can be expected to respond by offering phony debt relief to desparate borrowers.
Scammers like Arete Financial Group who charged illegal upfront fees for their services can be expected to flourish in this new environment. Arete would change their clients’ Federal Student Aid (FSA) login ID, password and contact information with their clients’ loan servicer which effectively eliminated contact between the borrowers and their loan servicers. This enabled Arete, according to the FTC, to place the borrower’s loans into temporary forbearance or deferment status without the borrower even being aware of this. Thus when the borrowers sent their payments to Arete that they were told would be credited toward their loans, the money actually was kept by Arete. Some of Arete’s clients saw their loans become delinquent and their income tax refunds garnished to pay for overdue loan payments. The victims of the scam also lost the money they paid to Arete that was intended to be applied toward their loans. Ultimately, Arete settled a lawsuit brought against it by the FTC and in March I told you about how funds obtained from Arete from the settlement were being sent to victims of the scam.
TIPS
The old adage still is true. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t true. Many of these student loan debt relief scammers promise quick loan forgiveness, which is unrealistic. In addition, you should never pay any upfront fees for student loan debt relief assistance. Those fees are illegal and are a sure indication that you are being scammed. Also, remember my motto, “trust me, you can’t trust anyone.” Don’t trust scammers merely because they use names that sound like they are affiliated with the government. You also should never share your FSA ID with anyone.
For information you can trust about federal student loan repayment option, go to https://studentaid.gov/articles/student-loan-forgiveness/ . There you can learn about loan deferments, forbearance, repayment and loan forgiveness programs and there is never an application fee. If you owe private student loans, contact your loan servicer directly. You can also look into student loan refinancing rather than consolidating the loans. Refinancing student loans can result in a lower interest rate. Also, this site is helpful https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-education-opens-revised-income-driven-repayment-plan-and-loan-consolidation-applications-borrowers
Here is a link to an FTC video that explains student loan scams and what you can do to protect yourself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TjSI4Q6ztQ
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Scam of the day – April 24, 2025 – Gold Scams
Gold is becoming an increasingly popular investment with concerns that the stock market is too volatile in response to the recently instituted tariffs. In times of political turmoil, such as we are experiencing at this time, gold becomes more attractive to investors. Unfortunately, along with legitimate gold merchants, there are many scammers who often contact their victims by telephone or email as well as through radio, television and online advertisements offering tremendous opportunites to invest in gold. Unfotunately, these scammers sell overpriced gold or even sell gold that they never deliver to their victims.
TIPS
An essential rule of investing is to never invest in anything that you don’t fully understand. Another important thing to remember is that merely because an advertisement appears in legitimate media, such as television and radio does not mean that the company doing the advertising is legitimate. Most media do little or no investigation into whether or not an advertiser is scamming the public.
Specifically for prospective gold purchasers, you should make sure that the dealer selling you gold is a reputable dealer which you can do by checking out the dealer with the American Numismatic Association at its website http://www.Money.org. Also do not have the dealer store your gold for you. Always take delivery of the gold yourself. Finally, only do business with dealers that offer a buy-back guarantee within 72 hours. As for gold sellers who contact you by phone and pressure you to buy, you should just hang up the phone.
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Scam of the day – April 23, 2025 – FTC Reports Huge Increase in Smishing
Although the name may not be as familiar as “phishing” which is the name for emails that lure you into clicking on malware infected links or providing personal information that will be used to make you a victim of identity theft, “smishing” is the name given to text messages that lure you into clicking on links or providing personal information in response to a text message from what appears to be a trusted source, such as a company with which you do business.
Smishing scams have gotten much worse over the last year. According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Americans lost $470 million dollars to text message scams and the real number is probably considerably higher as many victims of text message scams do not report being scammed . Many smishing text messages appearing to come from Amazon, USPS, Federal Express, Cash App, Netflix and others. Text message scams involved with Fast Pass toll payments were particularly prevalent last year. Like phishing emails, the purpose of a smishing text message is to either lure you into providing personal information that will be used to make you a victim of identity theft or to click on a link in the text message that will download dangerous malware.
Making matters worse, scammers are able to use bots to send thousands of smishing text messages in a matter of seconds and while many phones have anti-spam filters to recognize repetitive text patterns used by scammers, scammers are able to use AI go created slight variations of their smishing text messages to avoid detection.
TIPS
Among the topics of smishing text messages are free prizes, gift cards or coupons, credit card offers, student loan assistance, suspicious activity on an account of yours, or a need to update your payment information with a company with which you do business. Smishing emails that appear to come from your bank are also quite common.
As I always say, “trust me, you can’t trust anyone.” You can never be truly sure when you receive a text message seeking personal information such as your credit card number whether or not the email is a scam. The risk of clicking on a link or providing the requested information is just too high. Instead, if you think that the text message might be legitimate, you should contact the company at a telephone number that you know is legitimate and find out whether or not the text message was a scam.
As for Netflix, which has been used as a hook in many recent smishing scams, the real Netflix will never ask in an email or text message for any of your personal information so anytime you get an email or text message purportedly from Netflix asking for your credit card number, Social Security number or any other personal information, it is a scam. Here is a link to Netflix’s security page for information about staying secure in regard to your Netflix account. https://help.netflix.com/en/node/13243
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Scam of the day – April 22, 2025 – Protecting Your iPhone
Theft of iPhones is a major problem. As long ago as 2014 the FCC indicated that a million iPhones were stolen annually in the United States and there is no reason to believe that the number hasn’t gone up even further since then. The reason for iPhone theft is twofold. First, the phone itself can be sold on the black market for a signficant profit and, perhaps even more troubling, your phone, if not properly protected, can provide information that can lead to identity theft including accessing your bank accounts.
TIPS
So what should you do to protect yourself?
You should consider using Apple’s Device Protection which will protect the security of your phone when it is away from home or work. To turn on Stolen Device Protection, you must use two-factor authentication for your Apple Account and set up or enable the following on your iPhone: a device passcode; Face ID or Touch ID; and Significant Locations* (Location Services). This will protect you even if the thief knows your passcode.
Use a strong passcode. Avoid simple passcodes like “1234” or “abcd”. Consider using Face ID or Touch ID for added security.
Turn off Wallet Access when locked. This will prevent a thief from being able to access to payment cards, concert tickets or sport event tickets stored in your Apple Wallet. To do this go to Settings > Face ID & Passcode, toggle off “Wallet” under “Allow Access When Locked”.
Finally, and of great importance, don’t store unencrypted passwords on your phone and turn off autologin/autofill by going to Settings s > Passwords > Autofill Passwords, toggle off the autofill option.
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Scam of the day – April 21, 2025 – Gift Cards are a Scammers Best Friend
Scammers are big fans of gift cards because they are easy to purchase, easy to send to the scammer and impossible to trace to the scammer. According to the FTC, consumers lost 228 million dollars to gift card scams last year. It is not even necessary for the scammer to be in possession of the actual gift card to use it. Sending the gift card numbers or taking a picture on your phone and transmitting it to the scammer is sufficient for the scammer to use the gift card to buy things that can then be sold and converted into cash.
In many instances the scams involved scammers posing as large companies or government agencies such as the IRS demanding payments. It is important to remember that no legitimate company and no government agencies asks for or accepts gift cards as a payment method so anytime you are asked for a payment by gift card, you can be confident it is a scam. For example Apple gift cards cannot be used for anything other than buying Apple products which are a favorite of scammers who use them to buy high end Apple products and sell them on the black market to launder the stiolen funds.
In an interesting development, the FTC noted that Target gift cards were the most popular choice for scammers with scammers asking specifically for Target gift cards in twice as many instances as the next most popular gift card and even when the gift card requested by the scammers was not a Target gift card, the scammers asked their victims to purchase the particular gift cards at a Target store.
TIPS
Although it is impossible to stop payment on a gift card or trace the user after the scammer has used it, if you recognize immediately that you have provided a gift card to a scammer, you can report it to the issuer to cancel the card. Here is contact information for some popular gift cards.
Amazon
- Call 1 (888) 280-4331.
- Keep the Amazon card itself and your receipt for the Amazon card.
- Learn about Amazon gift card scams and how to report them. Click on “Contact us.”
Google Play
- Report the gift card scam to Google.
- Keep the Google Play card itself and your receipt for the Google Play card.
- Learn about Google Play gift card scams and how to report them.
iTunes
- Call Apple Support right away at 1 (800) 275-2273. Say “gift card” to connect with a live representative.
- Ask if the money is still on the iTunes card. If so, Apple can put a freeze on it. You might be able to get your money back from them.
- Keep the iTunes card itself and your receipt for the iTunes card.
- Learn about iTunes gift card scams and how to report them.
Target
- Call Target GiftCard Services at 1 (800) 544-2943
MoneyPak
- Report gift card scams to MoneyPak.
- Keep the MoneyPak card itself and your receipt for the MoneyPak card.
- Learn about MoneyPak gift card scams.
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