Keep your money Avoid scams

Scam artists are more becoming more sophisticated each day. They have had years both on the telephone and internet to perfect their skills. In today's economy it seems they are working overtime to separate those they can from their money. These are a few of the things we do to avoid scams and keep our money.

Scams come in many forms, many are easy to identify. The simple scam saying there is so much deposited in this country or that and if you send a certain amount of money it's yours. Once you pay them anything they will keep asking for more, the only money moving will be yours. We get about five of those a week. If you are male scam artists even show up on Skype. These are "girls" who first want to flirt then start asking for money to help them with something, usually funding for college. Those are good for a laugh, before they are deleted. Those are the easy ones, they are blatantly trying to get your money.

Always access your bank, credit card accounts, Paypal, and all other payment processers only through their respective websites. We have received emails telling us our accounts have been blocked and we need to update our information to "fix" the problem. In each case the email was addressed to us, but was a scam artist trying to take our account information. Also watch your passwords, don't use the same one for anything having to do with receiving money which you use for any other program. Our corporation has had someone buy a new computer at our expense because we neglected this simple rule. We consider these more sophisticated scams.

Anyone trying to get you to part with your money, however offer nothing of personal value, we consider a scam artist. The internet is filled with people who fit this category. The “Guru’s” with their "one to six click" ways to riches are at the top of the list. If a program requires you spend money and say you have to recruit to be paid, if you don’t have experience consider it a scam at least for you personally. If your serious about earning from an online source, use a free program to test your recruiting skills first. There are many sites and programs on the internet where this can be done. We won’t go into them here.

More than once we have been approached by a company over the phone who were offering a shoddy internet product. Research showed quickly a better version was available on the internet which cost at least 5 times less. Either do research while on the phone or just say No. If you do get talked into buying, remember do your research quickly. Every legitimate company is supposed to offer a minimum of three days in which they must return all of your money. We have seen an increase in these lately. It appears as the economy flounders more people are getting into this as a way to help their personal economy.

If your correct email address does not show in the recipient box do not send any personal information no matter how good their offer sounds. These include the ones who say they are going to loan you money, they have a job offer for you, and if they say they are a lawyer or a delivery company. Better yet if your address isn’t there just delete it. We have seen this done two ways one says undisclosed recipient the other is masked with another email address. Be sure to look at what is in the recipient box before you start typing.

There are still many companies out there who sell or give away names of people who have opted in to their program so even if your name does appear you still have to beware. The latest scam we discovered is someone pretending to be a credit card company we deal with. They wanted all the personal details so the account could be verified. Never put your credit card number or personal information on a form you have not verified with the credit card company either by phone, or by logging into your actual credit card account. This is the closest we came to messing up. Everything looked legitimate, even the phone number to reach the credit card company was correct.

Later in life two of my grandmothers favorite sayings were “a fool and his/her money are soon parted“, and “:if it sounds too good to be true, keep you money in your pocket” . Be aware, stay alert, and keep your money out of he hands of scam artists.