Covid Relief on Credit Cards

There are many Coronavirus scams to do with protective equipment, fake treatments, priority access to vaccines, government grants etc.

This latest scam uses cold calling – the scammers call or you get a computerised message on your answering service.

The message says they can offer 0% interest on a new credit card due to the Coronavirus pandemic.

To sweeten the deal, they will also transfer over to their card all of your current credit card debts and they will do this for free and then offer 0% interest on those debts as well.

All sounds great but obviously is lies as anyone offering 0% interest for more than a short period is going to go bankrupt.

Never trust such callers and never respond to computerised messages. They simply want your card details so they can steal from you.

If you want a better deal for credit than you currently have – research the offers available and make sure they are genuine before signing up for anything.

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.

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Stupidest Spam of the Week Impossible Money Lender

There are lots of scammers offering fake loans at almost zero interest and for any reason.

People would have to be quite desperate to take any notice of these sort of obvious scam emails, but some do.

This latest one  is from moneystorelendings.xyz and ‘.xyz’ is not a domain name suffix that any legitimate lending institution would use, so obviously it’s a scam.

“We provide loans up to 500k without requiring good credit or collateral.”

Anyone would did lend to people with a poor credit rating and no collateral would be throwing their money away unless they had some way of guaranteeing the loans.

“we provide an Instant Approval in less than 30 seconds and funding the next day.”

The purpose of the email is to get you to click the link to ‘find out how much you qualify for’.

To get that answer you have to provide your financial details which the scammer can then sell to other criminals and rob your accounts.

Only ever consider loans from reputable financial institutions

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KB Was Married to a Scammer

A post by K.B. Beaumaarks

I am an educated professional with an upper level income. My scams occurred not with an outsider but a partner…. yep first with my ex-husband who was a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine – a “trustworthy profession”.  I was blinded by the scammer that he was.

My point is to trust your gut no matter who the person is. If it feels wrong…. chances are it is wrong.

I had met my ex husband as a client with the many rescue dogs I had.

Started a whirlwind romance (not knowing he wasn’t divorced yet) and eventually marrying him. We built a very successful practice together and when it came down to whose name everything went in, he convinced me to put it all in his corporation name stating I was not allowed because I was not a doctor….. meanwhile he stockpiled and hid money from me.

He asked me to sign so many papers regarding corporate taxes etc and I trusted him. He was my husband. Our accountant was our friend. Long story short, eventually I caught him embezzling our life savings and planning on running away to an island without me.

Once I discovered this, I let the courts take over. How could a spouse do this to me. We were married…….

I have written a book called The Preah Secrets and it deals with my veterinary husband and how I discovered his heist and how I followed my gut to eventually discover his intentions of deceit. I prepared and eventually sought justice for myself. I hope the book inspires others to follow their instincts and remember, scams can happen to anyone by anyone.

The book is available at Amazon and other places.

Do leave a comment on this post – click on the post title then scroll down to leave your comment.

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U.S. Unemployment Scam

Criminals in America are exploiting the Coronavirus pandemic in a new way – by collecting unemployment benefits meant for others.

They submit fake unemployment benefit claims using the details of genuine people thereby collecting payments meant to help people in need due to the crisis.

Identity thieves commonly take personal information including name, addresses, date of birth, social security numbers and so on and use those to pretend to be that person and take out loans, credit cards etc. in the victim’s names.

The criminals spend the money and the honest person whose details have been stolen gets the bills.

Banks and other financial institutions do have systems in place to spot these crimes, but these unemployment scams are harder to detect as typically the owner only discovers there has been a theft when:

  1. They apply for unemployment and find someone has opened a claim in their name and has been collecting money.
  2. They receive a form 1099-G listing unemployment income subject to federal income tax.
  3. They receive notice from their state unemployment office confirming that a claim has been filed.
  4. They receive notice from their employer that someone has filed for unemployment in their name.

The criminals get the personal information from the usual sources – phishing emails, fake web sites, phone calls pretending be an official of a trusted organisation etc.

If you receive notification that an unemployment claim has been made in your name and it wasn’t by you – get in touch immediately to get it sorted out.

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.

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How Do Data Brokers Get Your Data

Data brokers, also known as information brokers, collect personal information, package it into bundles, and sell it to advertisers or other third parties.

On the Internet, we are effectively giving away huge amounts of personal information by using search engines, posting on social media, accessing websites that track us, using mobile phone APPS, buying and selling etc.

We give this information away freely and sometimes it’s used for our benefit but often to help businesses sell more to us and scammers to take from us.

Data brokerage relies on this freely available information that they can collect, package and sell on.

How Do They Get Your Data?

  1. Social media sites are a wealth of data to the brokers.
  2. Many APPS and web sites track your activities on their systems then sell that data to brokers.
  3. Tracking your activities on search engines and web sites. Often this is through tracking cookies which are used by the web sites you visit and that data can be aggregated.
  4. Browser fingerprinting. This is a relatively recent means of identifying people by using all of the data from your browser as you browse a website. It includes your IP address, browser details, your time zone, your language settings, any advert blockers, screen resolution and more. The idea is that this gives not quite a unique fingerprint but does make it possible for tracking across multiple websites.
  5. Ecommerce sites that track your activities. They do this to aid with how the web site works but also to help their Marketing activities. Some make the data available to data brokers.
  6. Some brokers also use off line data from sources such as The Census, birth certificates, marriage licences etc.

You can contact data brokers and ask what data they have about you and ask for it to be deleted. But there are a lot of data brokers to contact and they will continue to collect data about you.

Steps To Reduce your Digital Footprint:

  • Cancel any shop credit cards and loyalty programs you’re signed up with
  • Set your social media accounts to private and delete any that you don’t need
  • Make sure not to post any private information on social media and remove anything personal from your profiles
  • Use anti-tracking services to cut down the information that web sites you visit can learn about you
  • Use a secure browser that allows for anonymous browsing, without handing over details on every web site you visit to the search engines
  • Consider using a Virtual Private Network

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.

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