December 2, 2025 • 41 mins
Today we are talking about a few prevalent scams that ramp up in December, online shopping and charity scams. Join us as we give examples and show you how you can protect yourself and your loved ones this holiday season.
Let’s Talk About Scams is broadcast live Tuesdays at 8AM PT on K4HD Radio - Hollywood Talk Radio (www.k4hd.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com). Let’s Talk About Scams TV Show is viewed on Talk 4 TV (www.talk4tv.com).
Let’s Talk About Scams Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is intended for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for individual professional / legal advice. The podcast information was carefully compiled from vetted sources and references; however, R.O.S.E. Resources / Outreach to Safeguard the Elderly cannot guarantee that you will not fall victim to a scam.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/let-s-talk-about-scams--6483699/support.
Let’s Talk About Scams is broadcast live Tuesdays at 8AM PT on K4HD Radio - Hollywood Talk Radio (www.k4hd.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com). Let’s Talk About Scams TV Show is viewed on Talk 4 TV (www.talk4tv.com).
Let’s Talk About Scams Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
Disclaimer: The information contained in this podcast is intended for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for individual professional / legal advice. The podcast information was carefully compiled from vetted sources and references; however, R.O.S.E. Resources / Outreach to Safeguard the Elderly cannot guarantee that you will not fall victim to a scam.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/let-s-talk-about-scams--6483699/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
This program is designed to provide general information with regards
to the subject matters covered. This information is given with
the understanding that neither the hosts, guests, sponsors, or station
are engaged in rendering any specific and personal medical, financial,
legal counseling, professional service, or any advice. You should seek
(00:22):
the services of competent professionals before applying or trying any
suggested ideas. The information contained in this podcast is intended
for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for
individual professional legal advice. The podcast information was carefully compiled
from vetted sources and references. However, Rose Resources outreach to
(00:44):
safeguard the elderly cannot guarantee that you will not fall
victim to a scam. Let's talk about scams. It's the
must listen show for anyone who wants to protect themselves
and their loved ones from scams. Every Tuesday am Pacific
time on K four HD Radio, Joyce Petrowski, founder of Rose,
(01:05):
and her guests will provide valuable insights and practical tips
on how to recognize and protect yourself from scams. And
now here is your host, Joyce Petrowski.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Hi, everyone, welcome back to let's talk about scam some
Joyce Petrowski, founder and board president of Rose Resources Outreach
to Safeguard the Elderly, where we have a scam prevention
through education program where we bring scam prevention techniques and
give you the tools to be able to recognize scams
(01:39):
and avoid falling victim to these scams. You can find
our website at Roseadvocacy dot org, where you'll find all
of our social media links. On the homepage, scroll all
the way down to the bottom, and there's two options
to sign up for newsletters. We send one in the
mail at the beginning of every month, and we also
send one via email, and then every Tuesday morning at
(02:03):
nine fifteen in about twelve minutes thirteen minutes, you'll get
tip Tuesday email that has a tip on it. Some
people might already know the tip, and that's great, But
what it does is it help build a scam prevention
through your healthy skepticism and your scam prevention habits.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
It helps make it a habit.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
The more you see it, the more you keep it
top of mind, so that way when you are contacted,
you're going to be better app to recognize that it's
a scam. And avoid the avoid engaging with the contact.
Excuse me, this is probably going to be a shorter
one than normal. Today you probably tell losing my voice
(02:50):
and hopefully I don't start coughing during this, but we're
going to give it a shot. So today we're going
to talk about holiday online shopping scams and charity scams too,
scams that happened to really ramp up over the holidays.
As you know, we had Thanksgiving last Thursday, and then
Friday was Black Friday, so there's a lot of shopping.
(03:13):
I think it was originally meant people were going in
the stores, but a lot of people shop online. Then
Saturday was Small Business Saturday, and yesterday was Cyber Monday,
which was meant for all the online shopping. And today's
Giving Tuesday is for all the charities out there. It's
a worldwide platform for people to donate to their favorite charity.
(03:37):
You can find out all of our information on our
website if you want to make a donation again Roseadvocacy
dot org. So let's go to the online shopping. I
think today in today's world, a lot of people, for
a variety of different reasons, they do a lot of
shopping online. And there are a lot of fake websites
(04:02):
out there. Scammers. They have thousands of fake websites that
they've created. We've talked before about how much money they're making.
They're taking some of this money and they're reinvesting it.
It's not that expensive to buy a domain, and they
don't have to contract out with somebody to build the
website because they've already got the technical people they are
(04:23):
working for them that can build the website. And they're
going to impersonate a lot of larger companies, and you know,
you really have to look at some details and know
what to look for to determine, you know, if this
is really a fake website. So we're going to go
over a few ways that you can tell, and I'm
(04:44):
going to share my screen. Hold on one second, it's
been a while since I've done this. Here we go, No,
that's not it, share screen. There we go, entire screen,
(05:08):
all right, So I am sharing the screen. So what
we're going to do first is I went in and
I typed in list of fake online websites for online
shopping and Express VPN. This just happens to be the
(05:29):
company that I have a subscription to that I for
their VPN services, which is virtual Private network, and they
did this article. Let's see they did it, it says
back in twenty twenty three, but it's been updated because
(05:51):
they've updated it with list of scam websites in twenty
twenty five, so they've gone through.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
They kind of give you some what are scam websites? Right?
Speaker 2 (06:02):
They're there for deception and impersonations. They want to solicit
personal information, they want to exploit your finances. They might
put malware on your devices, and they're going to use
social engineering tactics, which again is they create that false
sense of credibility and they're basically using your good nature
(06:22):
against you to deceive you into giving them what they want.
So how do they work those phishing attacks, fake shopping websites,
distributing malware, They could have fake profiles on social medias.
They'll even do search engine ads, and they have bots
that will flood the comment sections with links to fake sites.
(06:44):
I actually see some of those comments on our mostly
on our Facebook is where I see them, and people
will put in the comments about well, you know, I
was victimized here and I went to this person on
this website and they really helped me, and it's a
bot doing it and they're just taking you to a
(07:05):
fake site. I tried to delete those as much as
I can when I do see them. So they're going
to list here ten different types of scam websites again,
phishing websites, fake shopping, malware distribution websites, tech support scams,
all different. We're going to get into charity scams, selling
(07:28):
fake tickets, they're going to clone legitimate websites. And so
they actually came up with a list here, and this
one basically said, here's a list of the top suspected
fake websites to avoid this Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
But they're still good to look at even though those
(07:48):
two days are over with. And actually I've got emails
this morning that some companies have extended their Cyber Monday
sales through today. But these are some ones that they've
listed that are fake. They're malicious sites, and you could
go through here and look at all these different ones.
They're going to tell you why they have a low rating,
(08:09):
poor customer service, they don't have a lot of contact information,
new websites, bargain basement prices that too good to be true. Thing,
here's one impersonating Tiffany. It's not the official Tiffany and
Company websites. You know, one of the most significant indicators
that is a scam is a clear warning from the
(08:31):
genuine Tiffany and Company. The official website explicitly states that
their products are exclusively sold through their official country specific
platforms and they only work with reputable platforms like farfetch
and netaporter as outside sellers. They don't have functioning social
(08:52):
media links, suspicious payment processing. It's a very young domain.
It's only been around for a couple of years. Some
of these I've never heard of before. But there are
so many different If you just go to do like
a Google search for a specific product, there are so
many different online shopping sites that come up, and you
(09:13):
know they might actually have a legitimate picture of from
the legitimate website, because sometimes those are easy enough to
copy and then paste on.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
The fake website.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Here's one myfaceboxer dot com, and I'm sure there is
a legitimate websites that sells boxers and socks and stuff
like that with I've seen a lot of them recently
where you can get your like on pajamas, your pets
picture and stuff like that. When scammers see that a
(09:49):
website is popular and a lot of people buy from
it and they're posting just record profits and sales and
stuff like that, well then it's an incentive for them
to want to.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Impersonate that site.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
So you can go down through a bunch of these.
But what I wanted to do was, so here's bed
Bath and Beyond and they have bed Bath Clothes and
close as c l o s e versus with store
closing right, and I believe now all the stores might
actually be closed. I'm not sure if they actually do
(10:26):
anything online with bed Bath and Beyond, but you could
put this without the parentheses here. You could just do
bedbath clothes dot com. And I'm going to search it
and I'm going to.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
Say, is bed bath close dot com a legitimate website?
Speaker 3 (10:49):
And I'm gonna just see what comes up.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Immediately it comes up as a scam website that impersonates
bed Bath and Beyond. So you can do this with
any website, but you want to make sure you put
is or something in front of it, because if you
just go to typebeedbathclothes dot com in your search bar,
it's going to if you don't have any antivirus or
antimoware on your device, it might actually take you to
(11:15):
that website and then you might get some malware or
a virus on your device, which again another reason why
you should always have a strong antivirus anti malware on
all your devices, especially your phone, because.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
It is a mobile computer and we do.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
A lot of online shopping on our phones. Not sure
if you can use your current subscription, just call the
company or log in through their official website into your
account and see if you have an extra device that's
not being used on there. So that's one way you
could go. In another way you could do it is.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
I got to.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Find the url void and I did a segment on this,
probably in the summer sometime, I think, and showing you
how to go in and look at things. So you
put the website here, Bedbathclothes dot com scan website and
(12:15):
it's gonna come up and it's going to say detection counts.
Six out of forty one places detected had detections. It's
only been around for a year. Server location is in
the Netherlands. So you come down here and all of
(12:37):
these first six here. Bitdefender is a popular one, have
detected that it is, so I'm going to hit that
it's a bad site. So I'm gonna hit view more details.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Stop. This website is not safe.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
It's classified as fishing, contains malware that may harm your computer,
pretends to be you know this a variety of different reasons.
It could host an gro scam, it could be pretend
to be a financial institution. They highlighted this one here
that it was fishing. But these are some other things
(13:11):
that fake websites could could be doing.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
So that was really quick being able to tell on
that one.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
You can go into these other ones for more detail.
And sometimes you're going to have a lot of a
lot of technical details that you really have to understand
what it is that they're talking about. But you could
always you could always look it up. Let's see there
are let's.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
See this is this is one.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
This is an article from Forbes that came up and
it was written on June eleventh about do not shop
on any in any website that's on this list.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
And so they have.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
The list of brands being in personated as extensive. Look
at all these Amazon, Costco, Bath and Bodyworks, Nordstrom, Saxo,
Fifth Avenue, Low's LL Bean, Tommy Bahama, Rolex Brooks, Running, Birkenstock, Crocs,
Sketcher's Total Wine. All of these are big companies that
(14:19):
most of them look to be global companies or at
least sell all throughout the United States. But you can
just look at all of these companies and ge appliances, right,
I mean trying to look at some other ones that
I might be able to Ravensburger, puzzles, nurseries, shoes, golf,
(14:42):
just about anything, yoga, beauty products, food, wine, you know, Instahart,
a whole Deluthe trading, auto parts, Party, Dollar General, a
whole bunch of different ones. And they actually come down
here and they're going to to give you all these
(15:02):
different domains. So like Amazon, and I usually always use
Amazon as an example. Just about everybody has an Amazon account,
whether you use it or not. So scammers know they
have a lot more likelihood of getting more people to
engage with their contact, whether it's phishing, whether it's or not, email,
(15:29):
text message, phone call. You know, they have a better
chance of.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Getting you to here, you go, getting you to.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Engage with their contact because your mind is reading Amazon
and you see Amazon here, but you're not necessarily paying
attention to the my in the box in this line.
So this my Amazon box news. What I'm gonna do is,
I'm just gonna do this, and I'm going to copy it,
(16:04):
and I'm going to go back in to a search
bar and go is and then you could type it in.
I'm just gonna paste it, but I'm gonna want to
get rid of these parentheses.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Here.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
A you could say, is it a legitimate or you know,
a fake website, a good website, whatever you want to say,
or you could actually, you know, type is and then
put it in the Miamazon box dot news. A scam
website or a fraud You can add the word scam
or fraud to whatever it is you're searching and see
(16:42):
what comes up. So it's like it is not a
legitimate website. It has one of the lowest trust scores. Okay,
Scam Detector. You can get on there and look at reviews,
scam advisors, scam void, Better Business Bureau. You know, there's
a bunch of different things you can look, but you
can do that with any of them.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
But again, I'm going.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
To go into where's it at here this url void
and I'm going to put it in here and get
rid of these parentheses. Oops. And I'm going to scan
the website and it's going to come up and say again,
(17:26):
six of forty one have detections. They registered their domain
nine months ago. Nine months ago. Now I actually before
this show put in Amazon dot com and it came
up and showed that their domain was registered thirty two
years ago. That sounds more like the accurate Amazon account,
(17:49):
not one that was just registered nine months ago. So
you can get in and look at again, all of
these have detected. Let's go into a bitdefender. You know, stop,
this website is not safe there. It is classified as fishing.
So there's a bunch of different U information you can get.
(18:14):
But see that's the Forbes. You go down, there's some
costco websites, Nordstrom. These are ones that are already known
out there.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Excuse me.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
So when you go to do your online shopping, if
you know the legitimate website that you want to go to,
then go to that legitimate website. You already know what
it is. But if you're just searching, So if I'm
just searching for.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Let's see.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
They had Nordstrom, I'm just going to see Nordstrom's store.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Right, that's the co pilot, that's the AI search.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
I was actually looking for something that would say sponsored.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
On there.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Let's see if this has any sponsor right here. Okay,
bed Bath and Beyond says official site, blah blah blah.
It says sponsored right here, So that means they purchased
an ad in order to get this information to show
up in the top three of your Google search, because
a lot of people are just going to go down
(19:36):
through the first maybe three or five options. So a
lot of people just might pick the first option and
this very well could be the official site. But scammers
will buy ads on Google as well to get their
fake impersonation website to come up in the top three
(19:57):
as well. So you know, let's say something like uh,
cyber Monday extended up to seventy percent off. Okay, well,
you don't necessarily need to click on that. You can
scroll down and again copilots search is the AI search,
the artificial intelligence. But you can go down and I
(20:24):
was actually looking for right here, it has you know,
bed Bath and Beyond dot com, and it's got some
locations that are closed. But now I know that was
the official site Bedbath Andbeyond dot com. So now I
(20:48):
can go into the actual website and start searching for it.
Let's go back to let's see here Saxsmith Avenue. Here's
a few Dollar General. Look at this Dollar General one
Dollar General dot com. But then look at how they
(21:11):
added an AI dollar. They took the L out okay,
and I actually read that as Dollar General AI. See
my mind was already thinking Dollar General, and I thought
they added an AI at the end. But really all
they took the L off and they put a lowercase
(21:35):
I in there instead of the lowercase L. And see
it caught my mind. I saw Dollar General and then AI.
So your mind can play tricks on you. So you
can write down all of the characters in that domain
(21:56):
and then look at each individual character. Some people have
said they like to write it down backwards and then
read the characters backwards, and then they can actually piece
together if it makes sense or not. Some of these
I've not heard of. This is a UK site, This
is a German department store. You know, here's a whole
(22:19):
bunch of lows is on here, Tractor Supply, Advanced Autoparts.
There's a whole bunch of fake websites on here. So
you know it might be good for you. If you're
looking to go online shopping this holiday season at a
(22:41):
store that you're not familiar with, that you don't know
what the legitimate website is you've not shopped on there before.
Type in the name of the store and say legitimate
site or type in is and then put the domain
the legitimate site or is and then put the domain
(23:04):
address a fake site or a scam or if you
want a list of known ones, just type in like
I did online shopping scam websites for twenty twenty five
and that's how I came up with those first two articles.
Another thing you can do is like this article for Forbes.
(23:25):
You can go up here on this toggle switch here
and it tells you your connection is secure, and I
have it set where I don't want to get notifications
from them. Now I could go on and reset it
and say, yes, I want them once I get on
their site, I want them to send me notifications, but
I don't want to get them. You can go on
(23:45):
and look at cookies and site data. My third party
cookies are blocked. I have that in my settings for everyone,
and then I can manage the on device site data
so there's twenty sites that are allowed data from the
site that I'm visiting. This Forbes. This is also available
(24:07):
to the site and its subdomain, so it's email dot
Forbes dot com, Forbes dot com, www dot Forbes dot com.
Now you can go in and delete, or you could
just hit these three buttons and say don't allow it
to save data or delete everything when you close all
the windows. And then a site can also embed content
(24:28):
from other sites, for example images, ads, and texts. These
other sites can also save data. I have no idea
what these other sites are. Data is treated the same
as the site you're viewing. You can go in and
you could just say don't allow it to save data.
Then it says that site's not allowed to save data
to your and go down through each one. Wow, that's
(24:53):
a lot of them on there. But then you can
also go on to site settings and.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
There's five cookies.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
I could just hit delete data and it's going to
take those five cookies off.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
I could go.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
In and see anything that is automatic. So the sound
is automatic, and I can change it to block it.
I can change all these are defaults, but you can
go in and change these to say allow block. So
there's a bunch of different things you can.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
Do with these.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
If I get back to this, I wanted to find
something about the cookies.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
Oh, that's what it was. I had third party cookies blocks.
So if I go like this, it's saying.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
I have ninety days until the cookies are blocked again.
I've temporarily allowed this site to use third party cookies,
which means less browsing protection, but the feature are more
likely to work as expected.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
Well, I don't want to.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Take the risk other people might be at you know,
I'm willing to take the risk with Forbes again personal choice.
But that's how you can check out the security of
the website as well. And connection is secure, you can
get into that certificate is valid. You can get in
here and you could look at a lot more pieces
(26:23):
of information on the certificate.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
Ope. Connection is secure.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Your information, for example, passwords or credit card number is
private when it is sent to this site.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
You can learn more.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
And it'll go in and it'll tell you more about
how you can check the site information, how you can
check if it's secure.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
It'll tell you on your.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Computer, on an Android, on an iPhone or an iPad,
So it gives you a lot of information on that.
So that's all I have for the online shopping. A
very good thing to have on all of your devices,
as I said before, is antis strong antivirus and anti malware.
(27:12):
You might also want to look at whichever subscription you
have or you're looking at getting see if they have
endpoint detection and response. This isn't enhanced, it enhances your
antivirus anti malware because this endpoint detection and response is
looking at the behavior of a website. So if it's
(27:33):
a brand new malicious website and the threats not known yet,
then if it's behaving out of the ordinary, if it's
behaving like a malicious site, would this endpoint Detection and
Response or EDR is going to recognize it and say, hey,
we don't think this is a good site. It's not
(27:54):
behaving like it should and all that, and we suggest
you don't go here because it could be a malicious site.
So consider that, and as I said before, and make
sure you always have your antivirus anti malware on your
phone cell phone as well, because it is a mobile computer.
(28:15):
We do a lot of We do a lot of
things on our phone, and we do a lot of
online shopping. On our phone. That's going to help you
not get to these malicious sites as well. So the
second part of what I want to talk about is
charity scams, and we talk about this in our presentation.
A lot of scammers come out of the woodwork at
(28:36):
the end of the year, especially in December. They're out
today because of Giving Tuesday, but they know a lot
of people wait until the end of the year to
do their charitable contributions. Maybe they want to see what
their taxes are going to look like for that year,
and they work through the stuff with their accountant in
(28:56):
December and it shows, well, if you make this much charity,
this is going to help you say this much in taxes,
or maybe they get their bonus at the end of
the year and they use a portion of that to donate.
A lot of different reasons, but anyways, scammers are out.
They're impersonating legitimate charities, and they're also just making up
fake charities and they'll go as far as having fake
(29:18):
websites and all of that. So no matter how you
get contacted, even if it's from a charity that you
are familiar with that you've donated to before, you know
how to make that donation. You know, the charity's legitimate website.
You can find all of their information on their website,
how to mail a donation, how to make one on
(29:40):
the website via a credit card, their phone number if
you wanted to call them and do a donation over
the phone.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
But let's say it's one you're not familiar with.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
So there's a website called chare already navigator at org
and I'm going to use Rose as an example, and
see it has giving Tuesday match activated. They're matching donations
up to seventy thousand. I'm going to get out of that.
(30:21):
And we talk about this in our presentation that if
you were to type the name of the charity in
like you were to type Rose the way we have
it listed on everything, Look, nothing's coming up here. We go,
it comes up here, but it's not the same. Okay,
But let's just say I continue and I type the
(30:45):
way we have it. It's going to say no organizations found,
and you're going to be like, what.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
What's going on?
Speaker 2 (30:53):
You know, well, that's because when we applied to the irs,
they did not like the periods, all the capital letters,
the slash marks, so they took all the punctuation out.
They made rows how you would write the name capital
R capital R lowercase ose, just like you would a name.
(31:15):
This is something support these top rated underfunding charities. You
could just explore it if you're interested or not interested.
I don't know how they determine what's charities set are
underfunded or not, so I don't have any information on that.
But as we say in our presentations, make sure you
have the tax id number for the charity. If the
(31:36):
charity doesn't want to give you the tax id number,
then that's a red flag. If it's a public charity,
they should give you the tax id number. It could
be that maybe they have a volunteer calling and the
volunteer doesn't know it, but they can get it and
they can call you back. Anyways, I'm going to put
mine in so eight seven dash two for seven.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
Oh, I don't know if it like the dash or not.
Eight three four nine.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
So that's my tax id number. And see how they spell.
And if you notice, when I first started typing out
the rose are period zero period s period, I got
as far as rose resources and it came up with this,
But again it didn't look the same, so you might
be looking and go, well, one of these is probably legitimate,
(32:26):
but I don't know which one is legitimate. But if
you put the tax id number in, every charity has
their own tax id number.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
This is Roses.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
So then I click here and that comes up and
it gives you all this information profile managed by the nonprofit.
It's a five oh one C three. This is our
physical address, this is our website, this is our phone number,
and that we received our IRS designation in twenty twenty one.
(32:57):
It has our mission on here and you can go
directly to the website through there. So there's a lot
of good information in Charity Navigator. You can also market
as your favorite. It looks like I need to go
(33:18):
in and put more details in here in order to
get rated. I have it in guide Star, which is
candid now, so I need to go in and put
some more information.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
In here.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
But it gives you culture and community is one hundred.
Accountability and finance. Oh that's why, because they're only looking
at nine nineties. We filed a nine to ninety N
(33:52):
the first year, and then the last three years we
filed an easy That's weird because because one year of
electronically filed IRS form data. Okay, anyways, I'll go in
and put more information. But here you can see and
it tells you if you look under this information for
(34:13):
the tax id number. An ei N is a unique
nine digit number that identifies a business for tax purposes.
So always ask for that EI in number. Use that
when you search on Charity Navigator. Yes, you can search
on IRS dot gov. I'll show you real quick on here.
(34:33):
You have to click through a few more things in
the search bar.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
You can put in charity search.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
Search for tax exempt organizations, tax Exempt organization search. You
can click on either one of them. Tax Exempt Organization
search tool search for a tax exempt organization. Now you
get to this. You can search all by the employer
identification number you put it in. You can search by
(35:09):
name too, but like I said, we highly suggest you
do it by the number because it is a unique
number for every charity. And you can search there and
then here it comes up and it gives you determinate
determination letters the form nine ninety N, which is there
copies of returns Publication seventy eight data copies of returns.
(35:37):
My guess is it should have yep, it does. It
has the only one they don't have in there yet
is twenty twenty four. Not sure how long it takes
them to get them updated, but we filed ours in
May of twenty twenty five and it's still not up
there yet, so I'm hoping it gets up there soon.
(35:57):
But you can click into here and you can actually
see our return, so you can find out a lot
of information. But as as we talk about in our presentations,
you're clicking through a lot more links through the IRS
to get where you want to go. Charity Navigator you
can just go directly there and the search button is
right at the top. So anyways, that's all I have
(36:19):
for you guys today. I'm gonna stop sharing. So just
to recap, be very careful when doing your online shopping
this year. If you are familiar with the company, you
know their website, go directly there to do even if
you see sponsored ads, go directly to the website that
you know is the legitimate website and look for the
(36:42):
look for the product and the ad, the discount whatever
it is, the sale price. If you're not familiar with
the company, do some research. Just type in the domain
is and then put the domain a scam or a
legitimate site, or put the name of the company in
and say is the name and then put the name
(37:03):
of the company a scam and.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Just see what's out there.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
And you're, like I said, you're going to come up
with some articles that I found the Forbes one and
off the top of my head, I can't oh the
Express VPN one where they've already gone through and they've given.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
You a long list of.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Websites that are being impersonated, and so you can see
it's not an all inclusive list. There are other ones
out there, so you just have to be extremely careful
with that. Oh, and have the good antivirus anti malware
on all of your devices. Consider adding endpoint detection and
response so it's going to look at new websites the
(37:47):
behavior to see if it's acting legitimately or if it's
acting more like a scam website. To protect yourself, always
have it on your phone as well because it's a
mobile computer and chair. When you are getting ready to
donate to a charity, if you are familiar with a charity,
donate like you normally do. If you're not familiar with
(38:08):
a charity, go to charitynavigator dot org, or you could
go to IRS dot gov and put in the search
bar at the IRS dot gov Charity search and click
through those links Charity Navigator right on the homepage. You
just put in the tax id number. You're going to
get directly to that charity through the tax id number
because every charity has their own unique tax id number
(38:32):
that they were given by the I r S and
Charity Navigator gets their information from the IRS. So it
could take a a short amount of time.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
With things.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
I don't know how Charity Navigator works as far as
updating their data if it's on a daily basis, a
weekly basis, a monthly basis, but you should be able
to get information that you need that it's a valid
charity and have the legitimate website to go directly there
as well. So thank you guys for joining us today.
Stay safe out there this holiday season, and don't forget
(39:09):
to subscribe you don't want to miss an episode of this.
You can go to our website at Roseadvocacy dot org.
You'll find all our social media links really really really appreciated.
If you would go to our YouTube channel and click subscribe,
we are really trying to grow that channel. That way,
you'll get notified whenever there's a new episode. You can
(39:30):
find all the past episodes on there, and you can
click on the shorts and that's going to give you
anywhere from a thirty to a fifty five second clip
of what that episode is about, and just a you know,
instead of watching for fifty minutes, you can go look
at that and see if maybe you want to go
and look at the whole episode. Anyways, we would love
(39:52):
it if you would subscribe to our YouTube channel, and
don't forget you're going to want to sign up for
our newsletter. You can sign up for both the one
and the mail and the emailed one, or one or
the other. As I said, with the email one, you're
going to get an email every Tuesday morning. If you're
already on there, you should have gotten it twenty five
minutes ago. It has a tip Tuesday. Even if you
already know the tip, it is a reminder and it's
(40:15):
all there to make scam prevention a habit, not to
scare you, not to make you always want to look
over your shoulder. But if you make scam prevention a habit,
you are going to be more likely to recognize the
scam when you are contacted and then not fall victim
and nodding, not engage with the contact and fall and
(40:36):
not fall victim to the scam. So until next week,
all right, thank you.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
Well, that's all the knowledge for this episode. Juni in
every Tuesday at eight am Pacific time on KFOURHD Radio
at KFOURHD dot com as Joyce explores a variety of knowledge.
So you have the power to make scam protection your
healthy habit. Until then, feel free to reach out to
Joyce and let's talk about scams.
This program is designed to provide general information with regards
to the subject matters covered. This information is given with
the understanding that neither the hosts, guests, sponsors, or station
are engaged in rendering any specific and personal medical, financial,
legal counseling, professional service, or any advice. You should seek
(00:22):
the services of competent professionals before applying or trying any
suggested ideas. The information contained in this podcast is intended
for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for
individual professional legal advice. The podcast information was carefully compiled
from vetted sources and references. However, Rose Resources outreach to
(00:44):
safeguard the elderly cannot guarantee that you will not fall
victim to a scam. Let's talk about scams. It's the
must listen show for anyone who wants to protect themselves
and their loved ones from scams. Every Tuesday am Pacific
time on K four HD Radio, Joyce Petrowski, founder of Rose,
(01:05):
and her guests will provide valuable insights and practical tips
on how to recognize and protect yourself from scams. And
now here is your host, Joyce Petrowski.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Hi, everyone, welcome back to let's talk about scam some
Joyce Petrowski, founder and board president of Rose Resources Outreach
to Safeguard the Elderly, where we have a scam prevention
through education program where we bring scam prevention techniques and
give you the tools to be able to recognize scams
(01:39):
and avoid falling victim to these scams. You can find
our website at Roseadvocacy dot org, where you'll find all
of our social media links. On the homepage, scroll all
the way down to the bottom, and there's two options
to sign up for newsletters. We send one in the
mail at the beginning of every month, and we also
send one via email, and then every Tuesday morning at
(02:03):
nine fifteen in about twelve minutes thirteen minutes, you'll get
tip Tuesday email that has a tip on it. Some
people might already know the tip, and that's great, But
what it does is it help build a scam prevention
through your healthy skepticism and your scam prevention habits.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
It helps make it a habit.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
The more you see it, the more you keep it
top of mind, so that way when you are contacted,
you're going to be better app to recognize that it's
a scam. And avoid the avoid engaging with the contact.
Excuse me, this is probably going to be a shorter
one than normal. Today you probably tell losing my voice
(02:50):
and hopefully I don't start coughing during this, but we're
going to give it a shot. So today we're going
to talk about holiday online shopping scams and charity scams too,
scams that happened to really ramp up over the holidays.
As you know, we had Thanksgiving last Thursday, and then
Friday was Black Friday, so there's a lot of shopping.
(03:13):
I think it was originally meant people were going in
the stores, but a lot of people shop online. Then
Saturday was Small Business Saturday, and yesterday was Cyber Monday,
which was meant for all the online shopping. And today's
Giving Tuesday is for all the charities out there. It's
a worldwide platform for people to donate to their favorite charity.
(03:37):
You can find out all of our information on our
website if you want to make a donation again Roseadvocacy
dot org. So let's go to the online shopping. I
think today in today's world, a lot of people, for
a variety of different reasons, they do a lot of
shopping online. And there are a lot of fake websites
(04:02):
out there. Scammers. They have thousands of fake websites that
they've created. We've talked before about how much money they're making.
They're taking some of this money and they're reinvesting it.
It's not that expensive to buy a domain, and they
don't have to contract out with somebody to build the
website because they've already got the technical people they are
(04:23):
working for them that can build the website. And they're
going to impersonate a lot of larger companies, and you know,
you really have to look at some details and know
what to look for to determine, you know, if this
is really a fake website. So we're going to go
over a few ways that you can tell, and I'm
(04:44):
going to share my screen. Hold on one second, it's
been a while since I've done this. Here we go, No,
that's not it, share screen. There we go, entire screen,
(05:08):
all right, So I am sharing the screen. So what
we're going to do first is I went in and
I typed in list of fake online websites for online
shopping and Express VPN. This just happens to be the
(05:29):
company that I have a subscription to that I for
their VPN services, which is virtual Private network, and they
did this article. Let's see they did it, it says
back in twenty twenty three, but it's been updated because
(05:51):
they've updated it with list of scam websites in twenty
twenty five, so they've gone through.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
They kind of give you some what are scam websites? Right?
Speaker 2 (06:02):
They're there for deception and impersonations. They want to solicit
personal information, they want to exploit your finances. They might
put malware on your devices, and they're going to use
social engineering tactics, which again is they create that false
sense of credibility and they're basically using your good nature
(06:22):
against you to deceive you into giving them what they want.
So how do they work those phishing attacks, fake shopping websites,
distributing malware, They could have fake profiles on social medias.
They'll even do search engine ads, and they have bots
that will flood the comment sections with links to fake sites.
(06:44):
I actually see some of those comments on our mostly
on our Facebook is where I see them, and people
will put in the comments about well, you know, I
was victimized here and I went to this person on
this website and they really helped me, and it's a
bot doing it and they're just taking you to a
(07:05):
fake site. I tried to delete those as much as
I can when I do see them. So they're going
to list here ten different types of scam websites again,
phishing websites, fake shopping, malware distribution websites, tech support scams,
all different. We're going to get into charity scams, selling
(07:28):
fake tickets, they're going to clone legitimate websites. And so
they actually came up with a list here, and this
one basically said, here's a list of the top suspected
fake websites to avoid this Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
But they're still good to look at even though those
(07:48):
two days are over with. And actually I've got emails
this morning that some companies have extended their Cyber Monday
sales through today. But these are some ones that they've
listed that are fake. They're malicious sites, and you could
go through here and look at all these different ones.
They're going to tell you why they have a low rating,
(08:09):
poor customer service, they don't have a lot of contact information,
new websites, bargain basement prices that too good to be true. Thing,
here's one impersonating Tiffany. It's not the official Tiffany and
Company websites. You know, one of the most significant indicators
that is a scam is a clear warning from the
(08:31):
genuine Tiffany and Company. The official website explicitly states that
their products are exclusively sold through their official country specific
platforms and they only work with reputable platforms like farfetch
and netaporter as outside sellers. They don't have functioning social
(08:52):
media links, suspicious payment processing. It's a very young domain.
It's only been around for a couple of years. Some
of these I've never heard of before. But there are
so many different If you just go to do like
a Google search for a specific product, there are so
many different online shopping sites that come up, and you
(09:13):
know they might actually have a legitimate picture of from
the legitimate website, because sometimes those are easy enough to
copy and then paste on.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
The fake website.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Here's one myfaceboxer dot com, and I'm sure there is
a legitimate websites that sells boxers and socks and stuff
like that with I've seen a lot of them recently
where you can get your like on pajamas, your pets
picture and stuff like that. When scammers see that a
(09:49):
website is popular and a lot of people buy from
it and they're posting just record profits and sales and
stuff like that, well then it's an incentive for them
to want to.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Impersonate that site.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
So you can go down through a bunch of these.
But what I wanted to do was, so here's bed
Bath and Beyond and they have bed Bath Clothes and
close as c l o s e versus with store
closing right, and I believe now all the stores might
actually be closed. I'm not sure if they actually do
(10:26):
anything online with bed Bath and Beyond, but you could
put this without the parentheses here. You could just do
bedbath clothes dot com. And I'm going to search it
and I'm going to.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
Say, is bed bath close dot com a legitimate website?
Speaker 3 (10:49):
And I'm gonna just see what comes up.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Immediately it comes up as a scam website that impersonates
bed Bath and Beyond. So you can do this with
any website, but you want to make sure you put
is or something in front of it, because if you
just go to typebeedbathclothes dot com in your search bar,
it's going to if you don't have any antivirus or
antimoware on your device, it might actually take you to
(11:15):
that website and then you might get some malware or
a virus on your device, which again another reason why
you should always have a strong antivirus anti malware on
all your devices, especially your phone, because.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
It is a mobile computer and we do.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
A lot of online shopping on our phones. Not sure
if you can use your current subscription, just call the
company or log in through their official website into your
account and see if you have an extra device that's
not being used on there. So that's one way you
could go. In another way you could do it is.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
I got to.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Find the url void and I did a segment on this,
probably in the summer sometime, I think, and showing you
how to go in and look at things. So you
put the website here, Bedbathclothes dot com scan website and
(12:15):
it's gonna come up and it's going to say detection counts.
Six out of forty one places detected had detections. It's
only been around for a year. Server location is in
the Netherlands. So you come down here and all of
(12:37):
these first six here. Bitdefender is a popular one, have
detected that it is, so I'm going to hit that
it's a bad site. So I'm gonna hit view more details.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Stop. This website is not safe.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
It's classified as fishing, contains malware that may harm your computer,
pretends to be you know this a variety of different reasons.
It could host an gro scam, it could be pretend
to be a financial institution. They highlighted this one here
that it was fishing. But these are some other things
(13:11):
that fake websites could could be doing.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
So that was really quick being able to tell on
that one.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
You can go into these other ones for more detail.
And sometimes you're going to have a lot of a
lot of technical details that you really have to understand
what it is that they're talking about. But you could
always you could always look it up. Let's see there
are let's.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
See this is this is one.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
This is an article from Forbes that came up and
it was written on June eleventh about do not shop
on any in any website that's on this list.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
And so they have.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
The list of brands being in personated as extensive. Look
at all these Amazon, Costco, Bath and Bodyworks, Nordstrom, Saxo,
Fifth Avenue, Low's LL Bean, Tommy Bahama, Rolex Brooks, Running, Birkenstock, Crocs,
Sketcher's Total Wine. All of these are big companies that
(14:19):
most of them look to be global companies or at
least sell all throughout the United States. But you can
just look at all of these companies and ge appliances, right,
I mean trying to look at some other ones that
I might be able to Ravensburger, puzzles, nurseries, shoes, golf,
(14:42):
just about anything, yoga, beauty products, food, wine, you know, Instahart,
a whole Deluthe trading, auto parts, Party, Dollar General, a
whole bunch of different ones. And they actually come down
here and they're going to to give you all these
(15:02):
different domains. So like Amazon, and I usually always use
Amazon as an example. Just about everybody has an Amazon account,
whether you use it or not. So scammers know they
have a lot more likelihood of getting more people to
engage with their contact, whether it's phishing, whether it's or not, email,
(15:29):
text message, phone call. You know, they have a better
chance of.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Getting you to here, you go, getting you to.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Engage with their contact because your mind is reading Amazon
and you see Amazon here, but you're not necessarily paying
attention to the my in the box in this line.
So this my Amazon box news. What I'm gonna do is,
I'm just gonna do this, and I'm going to copy it,
(16:04):
and I'm going to go back in to a search
bar and go is and then you could type it in.
I'm just gonna paste it, but I'm gonna want to
get rid of these parentheses.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Here.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
A you could say, is it a legitimate or you know,
a fake website, a good website, whatever you want to say,
or you could actually, you know, type is and then
put it in the Miamazon box dot news. A scam
website or a fraud You can add the word scam
or fraud to whatever it is you're searching and see
(16:42):
what comes up. So it's like it is not a
legitimate website. It has one of the lowest trust scores. Okay,
Scam Detector. You can get on there and look at reviews,
scam advisors, scam void, Better Business Bureau. You know, there's
a bunch of different things you can look, but you
can do that with any of them.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
But again, I'm going.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
To go into where's it at here this url void
and I'm going to put it in here and get
rid of these parentheses. Oops. And I'm going to scan
the website and it's going to come up and say again,
(17:26):
six of forty one have detections. They registered their domain
nine months ago. Nine months ago. Now I actually before
this show put in Amazon dot com and it came
up and showed that their domain was registered thirty two
years ago. That sounds more like the accurate Amazon account,
(17:49):
not one that was just registered nine months ago. So
you can get in and look at again, all of
these have detected. Let's go into a bitdefender. You know, stop,
this website is not safe there. It is classified as fishing.
So there's a bunch of different U information you can get.
(18:14):
But see that's the Forbes. You go down, there's some
costco websites, Nordstrom. These are ones that are already known
out there.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Excuse me.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
So when you go to do your online shopping, if
you know the legitimate website that you want to go to,
then go to that legitimate website. You already know what
it is. But if you're just searching, So if I'm
just searching for.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
Let's see.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
They had Nordstrom, I'm just going to see Nordstrom's store.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Right, that's the co pilot, that's the AI search.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
I was actually looking for something that would say sponsored.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
On there.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Let's see if this has any sponsor right here. Okay,
bed Bath and Beyond says official site, blah blah blah.
It says sponsored right here, So that means they purchased
an ad in order to get this information to show
up in the top three of your Google search, because
a lot of people are just going to go down
(19:36):
through the first maybe three or five options. So a
lot of people just might pick the first option and
this very well could be the official site. But scammers
will buy ads on Google as well to get their
fake impersonation website to come up in the top three
(19:57):
as well. So you know, let's say something like uh,
cyber Monday extended up to seventy percent off. Okay, well,
you don't necessarily need to click on that. You can
scroll down and again copilots search is the AI search,
the artificial intelligence. But you can go down and I
(20:24):
was actually looking for right here, it has you know,
bed Bath and Beyond dot com, and it's got some
locations that are closed. But now I know that was
the official site Bedbath Andbeyond dot com. So now I
(20:48):
can go into the actual website and start searching for it.
Let's go back to let's see here Saxsmith Avenue. Here's
a few Dollar General. Look at this Dollar General one
Dollar General dot com. But then look at how they
(21:11):
added an AI dollar. They took the L out okay,
and I actually read that as Dollar General AI. See
my mind was already thinking Dollar General, and I thought
they added an AI at the end. But really all
they took the L off and they put a lowercase
(21:35):
I in there instead of the lowercase L. And see
it caught my mind. I saw Dollar General and then AI.
So your mind can play tricks on you. So you
can write down all of the characters in that domain
(21:56):
and then look at each individual character. Some people have
said they like to write it down backwards and then
read the characters backwards, and then they can actually piece
together if it makes sense or not. Some of these
I've not heard of. This is a UK site, This
is a German department store. You know, here's a whole
(22:19):
bunch of lows is on here, Tractor Supply, Advanced Autoparts.
There's a whole bunch of fake websites on here. So
you know it might be good for you. If you're
looking to go online shopping this holiday season at a
(22:41):
store that you're not familiar with, that you don't know
what the legitimate website is you've not shopped on there before.
Type in the name of the store and say legitimate
site or type in is and then put the domain
the legitimate site or is and then put the domain
(23:04):
address a fake site or a scam or if you
want a list of known ones, just type in like
I did online shopping scam websites for twenty twenty five
and that's how I came up with those first two articles.
Another thing you can do is like this article for Forbes.
(23:25):
You can go up here on this toggle switch here
and it tells you your connection is secure, and I
have it set where I don't want to get notifications
from them. Now I could go on and reset it
and say, yes, I want them once I get on
their site, I want them to send me notifications, but
I don't want to get them. You can go on
(23:45):
and look at cookies and site data. My third party
cookies are blocked. I have that in my settings for everyone,
and then I can manage the on device site data
so there's twenty sites that are allowed data from the
site that I'm visiting. This Forbes. This is also available
(24:07):
to the site and its subdomain, so it's email dot
Forbes dot com, Forbes dot com, www dot Forbes dot com.
Now you can go in and delete, or you could
just hit these three buttons and say don't allow it
to save data or delete everything when you close all
the windows. And then a site can also embed content
(24:28):
from other sites, for example images, ads, and texts. These
other sites can also save data. I have no idea
what these other sites are. Data is treated the same
as the site you're viewing. You can go in and
you could just say don't allow it to save data.
Then it says that site's not allowed to save data
to your and go down through each one. Wow, that's
(24:53):
a lot of them on there. But then you can
also go on to site settings and.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
There's five cookies.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
I could just hit delete data and it's going to
take those five cookies off.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
I could go.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
In and see anything that is automatic. So the sound
is automatic, and I can change it to block it.
I can change all these are defaults, but you can
go in and change these to say allow block. So
there's a bunch of different things you can.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
Do with these.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
If I get back to this, I wanted to find
something about the cookies.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
Oh, that's what it was. I had third party cookies blocks.
So if I go like this, it's saying.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
I have ninety days until the cookies are blocked again.
I've temporarily allowed this site to use third party cookies,
which means less browsing protection, but the feature are more
likely to work as expected.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
Well, I don't want to.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Take the risk other people might be at you know,
I'm willing to take the risk with Forbes again personal choice.
But that's how you can check out the security of
the website as well. And connection is secure, you can
get into that certificate is valid. You can get in
here and you could look at a lot more pieces
(26:23):
of information on the certificate.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
Ope. Connection is secure.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Your information, for example, passwords or credit card number is
private when it is sent to this site.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
You can learn more.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
And it'll go in and it'll tell you more about
how you can check the site information, how you can
check if it's secure.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
It'll tell you on your.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
Computer, on an Android, on an iPhone or an iPad,
So it gives you a lot of information on that.
So that's all I have for the online shopping. A
very good thing to have on all of your devices,
as I said before, is antis strong antivirus and anti malware.
(27:12):
You might also want to look at whichever subscription you
have or you're looking at getting see if they have
endpoint detection and response. This isn't enhanced, it enhances your
antivirus anti malware because this endpoint detection and response is
looking at the behavior of a website. So if it's
(27:33):
a brand new malicious website and the threats not known yet,
then if it's behaving out of the ordinary, if it's
behaving like a malicious site, would this endpoint Detection and
Response or EDR is going to recognize it and say, hey,
we don't think this is a good site. It's not
(27:54):
behaving like it should and all that, and we suggest
you don't go here because it could be a malicious site.
So consider that, and as I said before, and make
sure you always have your antivirus anti malware on your
phone cell phone as well, because it is a mobile computer.
(28:15):
We do a lot of We do a lot of
things on our phone, and we do a lot of
online shopping. On our phone. That's going to help you
not get to these malicious sites as well. So the
second part of what I want to talk about is
charity scams, and we talk about this in our presentation.
A lot of scammers come out of the woodwork at
(28:36):
the end of the year, especially in December. They're out
today because of Giving Tuesday, but they know a lot
of people wait until the end of the year to
do their charitable contributions. Maybe they want to see what
their taxes are going to look like for that year,
and they work through the stuff with their accountant in
(28:56):
December and it shows, well, if you make this much charity,
this is going to help you say this much in taxes,
or maybe they get their bonus at the end of
the year and they use a portion of that to donate.
A lot of different reasons, but anyways, scammers are out.
They're impersonating legitimate charities, and they're also just making up
fake charities and they'll go as far as having fake
(29:18):
websites and all of that. So no matter how you
get contacted, even if it's from a charity that you
are familiar with that you've donated to before, you know
how to make that donation. You know, the charity's legitimate website.
You can find all of their information on their website,
how to mail a donation, how to make one on
(29:40):
the website via a credit card, their phone number if
you wanted to call them and do a donation over
the phone.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
But let's say it's one you're not familiar with.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
So there's a website called chare already navigator at org
and I'm going to use Rose as an example, and
see it has giving Tuesday match activated. They're matching donations
up to seventy thousand. I'm going to get out of that.
(30:21):
And we talk about this in our presentation that if
you were to type the name of the charity in
like you were to type Rose the way we have
it listed on everything, Look, nothing's coming up here. We go,
it comes up here, but it's not the same. Okay,
But let's just say I continue and I type the
(30:45):
way we have it. It's going to say no organizations found,
and you're going to be like, what.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
What's going on?
Speaker 2 (30:53):
You know, well, that's because when we applied to the irs,
they did not like the periods, all the capital letters,
the slash marks, so they took all the punctuation out.
They made rows how you would write the name capital
R capital R lowercase ose, just like you would a name.
(31:15):
This is something support these top rated underfunding charities. You
could just explore it if you're interested or not interested.
I don't know how they determine what's charities set are
underfunded or not, so I don't have any information on that.
But as we say in our presentations, make sure you
have the tax id number for the charity. If the
(31:36):
charity doesn't want to give you the tax id number,
then that's a red flag. If it's a public charity,
they should give you the tax id number. It could
be that maybe they have a volunteer calling and the
volunteer doesn't know it, but they can get it and
they can call you back. Anyways, I'm going to put
mine in so eight seven dash two for seven.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
Oh, I don't know if it like the dash or not.
Eight three four nine.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
So that's my tax id number. And see how they spell.
And if you notice, when I first started typing out
the rose are period zero period s period, I got
as far as rose resources and it came up with this,
But again it didn't look the same, so you might
be looking and go, well, one of these is probably legitimate,
(32:26):
but I don't know which one is legitimate. But if
you put the tax id number in, every charity has
their own tax id number.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
This is Roses.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
So then I click here and that comes up and
it gives you all this information profile managed by the nonprofit.
It's a five oh one C three. This is our
physical address, this is our website, this is our phone number,
and that we received our IRS designation in twenty twenty one.
(32:57):
It has our mission on here and you can go
directly to the website through there. So there's a lot
of good information in Charity Navigator. You can also market
as your favorite. It looks like I need to go
(33:18):
in and put more details in here in order to
get rated. I have it in guide Star, which is
candid now, so I need to go in and put
some more information.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
In here.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
But it gives you culture and community is one hundred.
Accountability and finance. Oh that's why, because they're only looking
at nine nineties. We filed a nine to ninety N
(33:52):
the first year, and then the last three years we
filed an easy That's weird because because one year of
electronically filed IRS form data. Okay, anyways, I'll go in
and put more information. But here you can see and
it tells you if you look under this information for
(34:13):
the tax id number. An ei N is a unique
nine digit number that identifies a business for tax purposes.
So always ask for that EI in number. Use that
when you search on Charity Navigator. Yes, you can search
on IRS dot gov. I'll show you real quick on here.
(34:33):
You have to click through a few more things in
the search bar.
Speaker 3 (34:38):
You can put in charity search.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
Search for tax exempt organizations, tax Exempt organization search. You
can click on either one of them. Tax Exempt Organization
search tool search for a tax exempt organization. Now you
get to this. You can search all by the employer
identification number you put it in. You can search by
(35:09):
name too, but like I said, we highly suggest you
do it by the number because it is a unique
number for every charity. And you can search there and
then here it comes up and it gives you determinate
determination letters the form nine ninety N, which is there
copies of returns Publication seventy eight data copies of returns.
(35:37):
My guess is it should have yep, it does. It
has the only one they don't have in there yet
is twenty twenty four. Not sure how long it takes
them to get them updated, but we filed ours in
May of twenty twenty five and it's still not up
there yet, so I'm hoping it gets up there soon.
(35:57):
But you can click into here and you can actually
see our return, so you can find out a lot
of information. But as as we talk about in our presentations,
you're clicking through a lot more links through the IRS
to get where you want to go. Charity Navigator you
can just go directly there and the search button is
right at the top. So anyways, that's all I have
(36:19):
for you guys today. I'm gonna stop sharing. So just
to recap, be very careful when doing your online shopping
this year. If you are familiar with the company, you
know their website, go directly there to do even if
you see sponsored ads, go directly to the website that
you know is the legitimate website and look for the
(36:42):
look for the product and the ad, the discount whatever
it is, the sale price. If you're not familiar with
the company, do some research. Just type in the domain
is and then put the domain a scam or a
legitimate site, or put the name of the company in
and say is the name and then put the name
(37:03):
of the company a scam and.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Just see what's out there.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
And you're, like I said, you're going to come up
with some articles that I found the Forbes one and
off the top of my head, I can't oh the
Express VPN one where they've already gone through and they've given.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
You a long list of.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Websites that are being impersonated, and so you can see
it's not an all inclusive list. There are other ones
out there, so you just have to be extremely careful
with that. Oh, and have the good antivirus anti malware
on all of your devices. Consider adding endpoint detection and
response so it's going to look at new websites the
(37:47):
behavior to see if it's acting legitimately or if it's
acting more like a scam website. To protect yourself, always
have it on your phone as well because it's a
mobile computer and chair. When you are getting ready to
donate to a charity, if you are familiar with a charity,
donate like you normally do. If you're not familiar with
(38:08):
a charity, go to charitynavigator dot org, or you could
go to IRS dot gov and put in the search
bar at the IRS dot gov Charity search and click
through those links Charity Navigator right on the homepage. You
just put in the tax id number. You're going to
get directly to that charity through the tax id number
because every charity has their own unique tax id number
(38:32):
that they were given by the I r S and
Charity Navigator gets their information from the IRS. So it
could take a a short amount of time.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
With things.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
I don't know how Charity Navigator works as far as
updating their data if it's on a daily basis, a
weekly basis, a monthly basis, but you should be able
to get information that you need that it's a valid
charity and have the legitimate website to go directly there
as well. So thank you guys for joining us today.
Stay safe out there this holiday season, and don't forget
(39:09):
to subscribe you don't want to miss an episode of this.
You can go to our website at Roseadvocacy dot org.
You'll find all our social media links really really really appreciated.
If you would go to our YouTube channel and click subscribe,
we are really trying to grow that channel. That way,
you'll get notified whenever there's a new episode. You can
(39:30):
find all the past episodes on there, and you can
click on the shorts and that's going to give you
anywhere from a thirty to a fifty five second clip
of what that episode is about, and just a you know,
instead of watching for fifty minutes, you can go look
at that and see if maybe you want to go
and look at the whole episode. Anyways, we would love
(39:52):
it if you would subscribe to our YouTube channel, and
don't forget you're going to want to sign up for
our newsletter. You can sign up for both the one
and the mail and the emailed one, or one or
the other. As I said, with the email one, you're
going to get an email every Tuesday morning. If you're
already on there, you should have gotten it twenty five
minutes ago. It has a tip Tuesday. Even if you
already know the tip, it is a reminder and it's
(40:15):
all there to make scam prevention a habit, not to
scare you, not to make you always want to look
over your shoulder. But if you make scam prevention a habit,
you are going to be more likely to recognize the
scam when you are contacted and then not fall victim
and nodding, not engage with the contact and fall and
(40:36):
not fall victim to the scam. So until next week,
all right, thank you.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
Well, that's all the knowledge for this episode. Juni in
every Tuesday at eight am Pacific time on KFOURHD Radio
at KFOURHD dot com as Joyce explores a variety of knowledge.
So you have the power to make scam protection your
healthy habit. Until then, feel free to reach out to
Joyce and let's talk about scams.
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