December 30, 2025 • 45 mins
Join us for the last episode of 2025. We will discuss some scams like phone return scam, phishing scam, and fake kidnapping scam along with prevention reminders for the new year.
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.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
You should seek the services.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
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 safeguard the
(00:45):
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
kfour HD Radio, Joyce Petrowski, founder of Rose, and her
(01:06):
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 (01:20):
Welcome back everyone to let's talk about scams. I'm your host,
Joyce Petrowski, founder and board president of Rose Resources Outreach
to Safeguard the elderly. You can find more information on
our website at Roseadvocacy dot org. On the homepage you'll
see all our social media channels and if you scroll
down to the bottom of the homepage, you'll find where
(01:41):
you can sign up for our newsletters. We have one
via email and one that we send out in the mail,
and the one via email. Every Tuesday morning at nine
fifteen am, Arizona time, you're going to get a tip
Tuesday in your email inbox. Now you might already know
that to and that's great, but it reinforces your healthy
(02:03):
scam prevention habits, and it reinforces scams. So that helps
you to be able to make scam prevention a habit.
So the next time you are contacted, you're going to
be more apt to take that pause, step back, think scams,
know what to do in order to determine if that
is a legitimate contact or if it's a scam. So
(02:25):
today we're going to talk about a couple FBI public
service announcements. We've got another credit breach. We're going to
make you aware of and then an update for iPhones.
So I'm going to share my screen to We're going
to first go into the FBI Public service announcements. Sorry
(02:47):
about that, and sorry that wasn't what I wanted to
get to here. It is. So this one came out
at the beginning of December. You might have already have
seen this on our social media page. But it's about
(03:08):
criminals using altered proof of life media to extort victims
in the virtual kidnapping for ransom scams. So criminals are
taking photos, you know, they're getting them through social media predominantly,
but they're looking all over the internet form and they're
altering the photos and to use as proof of life,
(03:33):
the fake proof of life photos, saying that they've kidnapped
that person and they're holding them for ransom. Now, a
lot of times it'll be that they're going to contact
them through text messages claiming that they've kidnapped their loved
one and demand a ransom. They'll express significant claims of
violence towards the loved one if the ransom's not paid immediately,
(03:57):
and then they criminals can send what appears to be
a genuine photo or video of the victims loved ones
upon but if you look at close inspection, you can
often see inaccuracies when you compare to the confirmed the
actual real photos of that loved one. So here's some
examples of what you might see in the altered photo
(04:22):
which they could be photoshopping, taking away a tattoo or
a scar. They could it could be inaccurate body proportions.
So another thing here is interesting. The FBI says that
the criminals will sometimes purposefully send the photos using a
timed message feature, so it limits the amount of time
(04:47):
that you have to analyze the images. So it's always
good to do a screenshot or save the the the
photo somehow save it on your device so you can
go back and really inspect it. So here's some tips
to protect yourself when posting the missing information online. Be
(05:12):
mindful that scammers may contact you with a fake information
regarding your loved one. Avoid providing personal information to strangers
while traveling. A lot of people will put on social
media that they're traveling. You know, I'm leaving from here
and I'm going to hear. That's giving the scammer in
(05:33):
the criminal that information to know that you're going to
be in this particular place, so then they can use
that for a fake kidnapping for ransom message to some
of your loved ones. You can have a codeword that
you only you and your loved ones know, and you
(05:53):
need to make sure that if you do have that
code word, that your loved ones know why the code
word is established and how important it is to keep
it confidential. There's that false sense of urgency which happens
in the majority of scams. They know that if they
(06:14):
can get you in that emotional state and keep everything
urgent and emotional, then you're not going to think rationally.
You're not going to stop and think. You're not going
to call your loved one to find out what's going on,
which is one of the ways you can verify is
to call your loved one, not using the phone, you know,
(06:35):
not using the text message, or you know, returning the
phone call that came in. And always report it. You know,
whether you've become a victim of the scam or you've
realized it and prevented yourself from being a victim. It's
always good to write everything down and then you can
(06:57):
report it to the FBI at their IC three dot Gov.
Now there's a few. There's one other thing that I
want to tell you that you can talk to because
scammers now they can They've been able to spoof caller
ID for a long time, but now through different ways,
they can actually spoof the phone number and make it
(07:17):
look like it's coming from your loved one's actual phone numbers.
So we've talked about the SIM swapping scam where scammers can,
through your cell phone provider, impersonate you and get them
to switch the SIM out to their benefit. So you
can talk to your cell phone carrier and ask them
(07:39):
about the ask them if they have a SIM protection
or a port out pin that you can have on
your account that helps prevent criminals from hijacking your phone
number or spoofing you know, the calls and texts. So
that port out pins going to be an added layer
(08:01):
of security like a multi factor authentication code, and the
SIM protection is going to be there to help prevent
that SIM swapping from happening. Now, another thing that you
can do is, you know a lot of times on
social media, Facebook in particular, it's on Instagram and TikTok too,
(08:21):
But I'm going to show you with Facebook how you
can make your account private. So this is my personal Facebook.
Yes you're gonna see that a friend of mine has
the birth of his fifth grandchild. But anyways, go over
here to where your photo is in the top right corner.
(08:41):
You're going to come down to settings and privacy. Then
you're going to go to the privacy center. And if
you look here, it says settings to help control your privacy.
So let's review those settings. Now we're going to come
up here and that's manage your passwords. Security issues end
(09:05):
to end encrypted. But if you come down here, you
can manage your audience settings, and that is who sees
the information on your Facebook. You go into here, and
again this is my personal accounts. So these settings are
going to be for me personally. I've got a lot
of them set to public because I have Roses business
(09:26):
page attached to my personal page, and that is a
public facing page. So don't copy everything every setting that
I have. You're going to want to go in and
determine what works best for you. But seriously, can think
about making your settings private so you can go into
your profile information here. I can tell you here only me,
(09:51):
only me, friends of friends only me. Now I've got
public information down here. Yeah, I could go in and
change this all to only me or friends who can
see my friends list on my profile only if you're
my friend, can you see the other friends? Who can
see the people in pages I follow? It's public because
(10:14):
of the Rose business page being attached post and stories?
Who can see those? So who can see my future posts? Again?
I have it set to public because of Rose's business
page and most of what I do on my personal
Facebook is share posts from Rose. Who can see my stories?
(10:35):
They're visible for twenty four hours on Facebook and messages.
I have it posted as friends and I'm going to
switch this to public because of Rose's Facebook page. But
that's how you go in and you can switch it
to custom where you can only show it to specific
(10:56):
people or just your friends and past post who can see.
If you want to limit who can see your past
post to only friends, you click limit and you can
go in and do that. Now. You can also come
down if you want to block people, or if you
want to see who you have blocked, it's going to
come in. You can add somebody to your blocklist that
(11:18):
says they won't tell them that you've blocked them. And
I have one person blocked. I'm not going to get
into it but and show you who that is. But
you can click on that and that'll show you who's
on your blocked list. Review tags before they appear in
your profile. So this is something that I have on
there that I want to I have it turned on
(11:41):
right here. I want to review the tags before they
appear on my profile. So if someone is posting a
story or doing a post and they are tagging me
in that post, I want to be able to review
it before I have it show up on my feed
(12:01):
or in my stories, because maybe it's something I don't
want to show a show on mine and I can
always hide it, or I look at it and say
no that's okay, and I say okay, post to my store,
you know, my feed. So I have that on because
I just don't want I don't want anybody to be
able to tag me and automatically have it show up
(12:22):
on my page. I'm going to review it first, so
that's done. So that's all you can do there. You
can go into these other privacy topics, more privacy resources,
all of that. You know, you scroll down here. You
can find out if you do ads your information and
(12:44):
permissions are here. Privacy profile, privacy settings for Facebook and
for Instagram. You can find those at the bottom. So
that's how you can go in and check out your
privacy settings for and I'm going to stop. Actually no,
I'm going to go back to the PSAs here. So
(13:05):
please go in, especially to your Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or
really any social media that you have out there, and
make a determination do you really need to have all
of this visible to the public. Scammers will find all
this information and they'll use it to their advantage. Change
as much as possible, if not all of it to private,
(13:30):
or if you're going to change it to only allowing
your friends to view. Be very careful. When you get
a friend request from somebody, ask yourself, do I already
have that person as a friend. One way you can
check is to go in and look at your friend's
list and you can search and search for that person's name,
and if they already show up, then that means somebody's
(13:52):
cloned their account. And no, you're not going to accept
that friend request, but you are going to let your
friend know that, hey, I got a friend request from you,
so someone's cloned your account. You could also take that
profile and report it as well. Say this friend request
(14:12):
doesn't show up in your current list of friends, well
then you need to ask yourself do I know this
person right? Do you have a lot of mutual context?
You can go in your mutual friends. You can go
in and see who the mutual friends are and make
a determination based on that. You know, add that to
(14:33):
your factors to determine if you want to accept this
person as a friend. Go in and look at their
their page, you know, is it even if you show
even if there's a few friends in common, go in
and look at that person's page and see if it
makes sense. Is it a new profile, is it they
(14:55):
only have a few posts, you know, just different things
like that that don't seem right. And just really do
your research before you accept someone as a friend that
you don't know. The next public service announcement was just issued.
Looks like about eleven days ago, So this was this
(15:17):
is an update to one that was released just six
months ago in May. So scammers are still impersonating senior
US officials in malicious messaging campaigns. So they've got activity
dating back to twenty and twenty three where scammers have
impersonated senior US state government, White House cabinet level officials
(15:39):
as well as members of Congress to target individuals, including
the officials family members, in personal acquaintances. So if you
happen to get a message claiming to be from a
Kerrent or former senior US official, don't assume it's automatically authentic.
And we'll look at some different recommendations. So here's an
(15:59):
example as to how it works. So the actor impersonates
a high ranking official and they use an encrypted application.
So Signal is an encrypted messaging app, and I know
Signal's been in the news at different points through over
the last year, but WhatsApp is encrypted as well. There's
(16:20):
a lot of different encrypted messaging apps out there. But
the scammers when they impersonate these high ranking officials, they'll
ask about US policy, They'll request copies of personal documents,
They'll want to note appointment to companies leadership. They'll propose
a meeting with high ranking officials. They'll request a wire transfer.
(16:43):
This is a big year coming up in twenty six
for election, and so are they going to impersonate them
saying that they're asking for a donation to their election campaign?
And they need it immediately in order to do something,
so wire transfer it. They'll discuss current events, all to
make it seem more realistic, and they've actually they're using
(17:07):
AI artificial intelligence generated voice messages. They'll do it through
text messaging. They'll do it through voicemails they claim to
come from that senior US official. Establish a report. The
actors contact the individual and briefly engage on a topic
the victim is versed on, with the request to move
(17:27):
communication to a secondary encrypted mobile messaging app. Once communication
is established on that encrypted messaging app, actors continue to
engage the victim in a number of ways. So they'll
discuss the topic current events, by lotter relations, asking about
a trade or security policy. They'll propose scheduling a meeting,
(17:52):
or maybe you're being considered for a nomination to a
company's board of directors. They've also requested victims to take
certain actions, such as provide an authentication code that allows
the actors to sync their device with the victims contact list.
Supply personally identifiable information and copies of sensitive personal documents,
maybe a passport, maybe a birth date, a social security number,
(18:15):
could be medical information. Wire funds under false pretenses It's
not always to an overseas financial institution. It could be
one here in the United States with the goal of
getting it overseas, request the victim to introduce them to
a known associate. Maybe they're using you to try to
(18:36):
get to someone else. But in most cases the FBI
has seen it come through like a text message such
as Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp. Those are all encrypted, they're all
legitimate encrypted apps, but again scammers are using them to
their advantage. So here's one they've redacted personal information. But
(19:00):
you know, just a message like that. So here's some recommendations.
You know, verify the identity of the person calling you
or sending you a text or voice message before responding,
do the research for the originating number the organization, Find
the person or the organization's legitimate number, and call them
(19:20):
and say, hey, are you or so and so trying
to message me about whatever the subject matter is. That's
how you're going to verify that authenticity. Carefully examine the
email addresses or the contact information, including phone numbers, even
if the phone number that they're using is legitimate because
(19:41):
they said they can spoof phone numbers. Now you still
want to call the legitimate phone number for whatever organization
or person. Don't return the phone call that came to you,
or click on the phone number and the text message.
You know you'll be able to contact them, you know,
(20:03):
maybe through an official website or the official phone number
and verify what's going on. You know, they do the
AI generated voice cloning. So yes, oh my gosh, it
sounds like the President of the United States, so it
must be him. No, his voice is all over the place.
(20:25):
They can take clips of it. They can make his
voice say whatever they want, So don't believe it just
because the voice sounds like the person they're purporting to be.
The artificial intelligence generated contact has advanced so much it's
often difficult to identify. You can always, you know, if
(20:45):
you believe it's a scam and you're not sure, you
could always contact your local FBI or your local law enforcement,
the Federal Trade Commission, you know, ask them for help.
So again, you know, be careful with sharing personal information
online or over the phone. Don't send money, gift cards,
(21:08):
crypto or other assets to people that you've just met
online or over the phone. Not clicking on links and
emails or text messages. It's very hard not to do
when you're on a phone on a mobile phone, because
sometimes just scrolling you've accidentally clicked on something, which is
(21:29):
again why you should always have strong antivirus anti malware
on your mobile device. You have to treat it as
a mobile computer. Don't just automatically download information that's on
a communication that you didn't initiate. And set up two
factor authentication on all the accounts that will allow it.
(21:53):
Now they're going to use social scammers are going to
use social engineering to get you to disclosure your code.
And we've talked about this before. They're going to pretend
to be the bank. We've determined fraud on your account,
and we need to verify it you that we're talking to,
So we're going to provide a code and you need
to read it back to us to verify you. Well,
(22:13):
that's they're using that because they've gotten to the point
they already know your log in and they know they
need this code to get into your account. And it
says where do you want the code sent? It shows
the last four digits of your phone number or the
last part of your email address, and they already know
your email address and your phone numbers, so they click
on it, they send it to you, you get it,
(22:35):
you turn around and give it to them. They're in
your account. They're changing all of your passwords, your logins,
turning off the two factor authentifica, all that type of stuff,
and they're going to drain your accounts. So be very
very careful that creating that secret word or phrase. It's
a good idea as well. It doesn't replace multi factor
(22:56):
authentification with the different accounts, but a secret worder phrase
that you have with your family members. Please just make
sure whoever has that in the family that they understand
the need to keep it confidential and why it is there,
and it is only used in order to verify identities
(23:17):
and give examples as to what could happen, because you
don't want someone in your family thinking, oh, well, that's
never going to happen, that's far fetched, and thinking and
then it doesn't really you know, it's not really that confidential,
and blah blah blah. You know, let them know that
these things happen to everybody, and scams are easy to
(23:40):
fall victim too, and this is exactly why we need
to keep this confidential. So that's it. On the PSAs
from the FBI I'm going to stop sharing now and
the next scam that we're going to talk about, and
you again might have seen this on our social media.
(24:01):
It's about it's specifically with iPhones, but they could also
use it for Android phones as well. This article that
I'm reading from talks about an iPhone scam because the
person that wrote in had an iPhone and it almost
(24:21):
tricked this person into sending their phone back. And they
do it a lot this time of year because a
lot of people get new or upgraded cell phones for
Christmas for the holidays, and so they know they have
a lot bigger pool of people that they could trick
into sending the phones back. So this in the article,
(24:43):
this is what someone had wrote in. It said, someone
called me and told me they sent the wrong iPhone.
They said they were from the company, a specific company,
which was the company the person had received the iPhone,
the new iPhone from, but they sent him the wrong
iPhone and needed to replace it. So this person was
(25:06):
to rip off the label on the box, tape it up,
and set it on his front porch steps and FedEx
was going to pick it up and they'd put a
label on it and just for his trouble, they would
send him one hundred dollars gift card. But what got
this this gentleman to start questioning things was the person
(25:29):
on the other end of the phone was just too anxious.
They called him again at seven am to make sure
that they would follow his instructions. Right after that, they
picked up the box on the steps, called the cell
phone company, who confirmed it was a scam. There's no
such things as refurbished I seventeen phones because they're brand new.
(25:51):
So he this person ended up calling the scammer back.
We don't suggest to do that, this is just what
they did, and had a few choice words and hung up.
But even since then, the scammers continue to call for
the same thing. So just because you realize it's a scam,
(26:17):
and the scammer knows that you've realized it, they're going
to continue to call because they got you to a
certain point and they think if they can just be
more convincing and get you into a deeper emotional state,
they're going to convince you to do this. So we
went through basically how it works is they focus on
(26:37):
people who have recently bought a new iPhone. Now again,
this could work with Android phones as well. The information
often comes from data broker sites, leaked purchase data, or
marketing lists that are sold online. Then the scammers can
spoof the carrier's phone number so the call seems legitimate.
(26:57):
They sound confident there's a shipping mistake. They insist the phone.
The phone must be returned right away. They reinforce urgency.
The carriers already scheduled. You just need to take the
label off the box, tape up the box with the
phone in it, leave it outside. It'll get picked up
and you know, FedEx, you whoever it is that they
(27:19):
use as a carrier. And again this is nothing against
the carriers, because you know they're the scammer's creating the
label with the carriers. So the carriers are thinking that
this is a legitimate pickup. But they they sorry, I
(27:39):
got sidetracked there. The device is gone, so the scammer
either resells it or strips it for parts. By the
time you realize something's wrong, recovery is unlikely. So flip
over and see what it says here. So here's some
(28:00):
red flags with this. You get that unsolicited call. That's
the first thing we talk about in our Anatomy of
a scam is that contact method and this one happens
to be a phone call and you need to return
your new iPhone, and they pressure you to act fast
(28:25):
because they don't want you to take time to think
about what's going on, because if you took paused and
you took time to think about it, you're going to think, well,
wait a minute, did I even request to have my
iPhone returned? Was there an issue with it? Did I
make a request? And you'll go, no, I didn't, and
then you're going to know it's a scam. So they're
(28:46):
going to be urgent about it, and they're going to
want you to act fast so you don't think about
what's going on. Instructing you to leave it sitting outside
for a carrier to pick up with no label on it.
That's just not how it works. And they're going to
give you a gift card for your cooperation doesn't work
(29:06):
that way either, and they continue with follow up calls,
you know, just to make sure that you're still emotional,
you're still acting fast and all that. So, so if
you are going to do a legitimate return for a product,
you're going to get a return shipping label. It either
(29:28):
would have already come in your delivery in case you
needed to return it, you just have to fill it
out and maybe activate it, you know, I don't know.
Other times you could go on your online account and
say I need to return this, do what you need
to do there, and then they email you a shipping
a return shipping label. You know, every company is different
(29:48):
on how they do their returns, and so don't just
leave a package out waiting, you know, with no return
label on it. The urgency anything that's urgent, especially like returns.
You know, if you've initiated the return, they're going to
tell you you've got once you once the return has
(30:11):
been approved, you've got x amount of days to return it.
It needs to be received by this date in our
office in order to process it and give you your
refund or your replace, whatever it is. They're going to
give you time to do it. Installing, you know, strong
antivirus again, you know we're going to continue to talk
about that. You should have strong antivirus anti malware on
(30:36):
all of your devices and devices includes your mobile phone
because they are mobile computers. And save any messages or
called details because then you can report this information whether
you've fallen victim to it or not. You can report
the information to law enforcement because you're not the only
one that has fallen victim or almost fallen victim to
(30:59):
this type of scan. And the more information law enforcement has,
the more pieces of the puzzle that they can put
together and find the people that are doing this and
share your share your experience with other people. We love
to have people come on the show as guests and
share their experiences. Whether you have fallen victim to a
(31:19):
scam or not, sharing your experience is very powerful and
it helps other people know what's going on. If you
have an experience and you want to share it with
us on this show, just reach out to us. Info
at Roseadvocacy dot org. Again, it's info at Roseadvocacy dot org.
(31:40):
There's a new data breach that was just published yesterday.
It affects social security numbers of five point eight million consumers.
So there's a company called seven hundred Credit and this
(32:00):
company the records are related to customers of auto dealerships
because auto dealerships that some auto dealerships use seven hundred
Credit services and so it would be that information that
got breached and they while seven hundred Credit has not
(32:26):
published an exhaustive list of every data field involved. The
company has confirmed that sole security numbers have been were
one of the US highly sensitive personal information that was exposed,
which again raises your risk of identity theft and financial fraud.
(32:51):
So again we're going to reiterate strong anti virus and
antimoware on all of your devices, including your mobile phones.
If you're still reusing passwords, you might want to switch
to a password manager. It is subscription based. We don't
have a recommendation for a specific one. You can just
(33:12):
go on and google the best password Managers for twenty
twenty five, or we're right around the corner is twenty
twenty six the best Password Managers for twenty twenty six.
There's a lot of legitimate tech companies that have gone
through and on a regular basis they evaluate password managers,
antivirus software, credit monitoring companies, and they give you a
(33:34):
list of their top rated ones, their pros and cons,
the subscriptions, and sometimes they might even have discount codes.
But when you are googling, if you're going to Google
that or whatever you are going to google, just know
that when you look under the heading of and I'm
going to share my screen again and show you guys here.
(34:01):
So like, I'm going to go on and I'm going
to Google best Password Manager twenty twenty five. Okay, you
see here where cyber News comes up, but right here
underneath the title, it says sponsored. Now, a lot of
legitimate companies will have sponsored ads. They can buy ads
(34:21):
on Google. Nonprofits can do it too, and it's legitimate.
But scammers can do it also, And so don't just
click on the first one you come to. If you're like, Okay,
I recognize cyber News and that is a legitimate company
and I know their website. Will then just go directly
to Cybernews's website and search on their website for the
(34:44):
best password Managers of twenty twenty five. You'll get their article,
or just keep scrolling down. Okay, sponsored again, I'm going
to keep going down copilot. That's the artificial intelligence. Wired is,
to my knowledge, a legitimate company. If you already use
them and you know their website, go directly there again
(35:06):
you come down here. Now, these are not sponsored. And
I actually use Tom's Guide as a reference for some
certain things, and so I know that it's Tom's Guide
dot com. But again, if you want to If you
know that that's the actual website that you're looking at,
(35:27):
then you know you can click on it. But the
better thing to do is you know the actual website, well,
then let's make a let's go in and go Tom's
Guide dot com and go in here and go directly
to the Tom's Guide instead of clicking on that link.
Because if you saw it had a US after it
and I don't know, but I know this is Tom's Guide,
(35:50):
so and then you can go in here and you
can use the search bar to search for whatever article
it was you were looking for. So that's that's a
better way to search there. The other thing you could
do is a lot of companies now are have the
option of using a past key instead of a password,
(36:13):
and a past key is biometric information. A lot of times,
like when I log into Amazon, it'll ask me do
I want to set up a pass key? You can
set it up and I do. Use a password manager
and it will allow me to have the past key
in my Amazon account file in my password manager. It's
biometric information, the facial scan, a fingerprint, you know, something
(36:40):
like that, and those are security experts have said those
are a lot more safer than passwords, because every year
they do they do a survey and the majority of
us reuse passwords, and a lot of people still use
password one, two three, which is just like giving people
(37:02):
the keys to your house and your car and saying,
come in and do whatever you want, whatever you want.
But if you're going to reuse a password, you have
to ask yourself, if I'm going to reuse this password,
what damage can be done? If someone figures it out
on the first account I used it, They're going to
plug it in to all these other accounts. They have
a software system that's going to do that, and now
(37:25):
they're going to have access to those accounts other accounts
that you've reused the password on. So you've got to
ask yourself that question. You could sign up for credit
monitoring services. Again, those are subscription based. You can do
the same research that we talked about with the password managers.
You could put a credit freeze on You have to
(37:46):
go through all three credit reporting agencies Experience, TransUnion, and Equifax.
Quickest way to do it is to set up an
online account with them and you can go in and
freeze it and it just stays frozen. And that is
probably one of the best preventative measures for identity theft,
because when someone goes to take a loan out in
(38:07):
your name, whoever they're taking the loanout with, is going
to run a credit check on your name and sold
security number, and if your credit's frozen at all three
of the agencies, it's going to come back that we
can't give you any information on their credit because it's frozen.
So and then you'll get a letter from that company
(38:30):
saying we're not we can't issue you credit. You need
to unfreeze your credit and then come back and talk
to us. That's happened to my husband many times over
the last twenty years, and we're like great, because we
didn't ask for that credit, so his information's been out
there a long time. Some people don't want to freeze
their credit for a variety of different reasons. So if
(38:54):
you're not going to freeze your credit, then monitor your
credit reports on a regular basis so that way you
can find any fraudulent credit quickly and start the process
of identity theft and get that off of your account.
(39:16):
What other things are on here? There are personal data
removal companies. They are subscription based. Just understand that, Yeah,
you can sign up for him. It's great to have them.
They will constantly scan, you know, continuously scan the web
for your personal information because yes, they can have it
(39:37):
all taken off as of this point in time, but
give it twenty four hours and there might be some
of your information might pop back up. So they're going
to have to continually do it to continually get get
this your information off off of the Internet. The last
thing I want to talk about today is Apple has
(39:59):
a new security update with UH and I'm not going
to go into detail on what it is that was compromised.
There's a lot of code and stuff involved, but the
the the vulnerabilities that were tracked have been exploited in real,
(40:20):
real world world attacks, and it says they were limited
to specific targeted individuals. It doesn't say who the specific
targeted or if it was like a specific category of
people so or specific industry or something like that. So basically,
(40:44):
Apple's release patches, they've released the updates across their supported
operating system, so it's across all of their devices, the iOS,
the iPad os, the mac os, Safari, watch os, tvOS,
vision os, all of it. So if you have updates
that haven't been installed. Please go in and install those
(41:07):
updates on all of your devices that are Apple and
that includes any maybe home devices that you have that
might be Apple as well. And you can set up
your accounts to automatically do these updates on a regular basis.
Look into setting that up as well so you can
install those your They can be installed as soon as
(41:30):
soon as the updates come out and are made available.
Let's see that is it on that one. So just
to summarize, make sure you do all of your software updates.
(41:51):
Set your devices to do those automatic updates so you
don't have to worry that you might forget that you
want to go in and do it. If if you
don't want to set up for automatic updates, put it.
Put it. Put a reminder on your phone once a
week or however often you want, if you want to
look at it every day, every other day, twice a week,
(42:12):
once a week however often, put a reminder on your
phone and then go in to all of your devices,
and that includes your home devices as well, anything Apple related,
but you can do it for Android as well. You
can do it for all of your devices that are
connected to the internet to go in and do these
updates because yes, they might have some new features out
(42:32):
for you, but they also are going to have patches
for security flaws that they have found after the previous
updates were put out. And don't forget. No matter what
type of contact you get, always make sure that you
take a pause, You step back, You think about the situation.
(42:55):
You verify the situation before you can even begin to
believe that it it's true. And go into your social
media accounts and look at your privacy settings and change
as much as possible, if not all, of it to
private so it limits who can see your information. And
don't just automatically accept friend request. Look and see if
(43:19):
they're already your friends, then you know that their account's
been cloned. If they're not already your friend, you know,
look at the look at the the friend requests, look
at the accounts profile, see what's on there? Are they
posting doesn't make sense? Do you have a lot of
mutual friends? Who are the mutual friends? Do your research
(43:42):
and find out what's going on before you just automatically
accept those friend requests. I am still working on getting
a guest. Hopefully i'll have them next week for to
share their scam experience. So until then, remember you can
go on our website at Rosadvocacy dot org. All the
(44:04):
social media channels are there. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel.
We are more than halfway there to one hundred subscribers.
We want to get to one hundred because it opens
up some more things on our account, so please subscribe
to our YouTube channels. We also have a Let's Talk
about scams dot com website you can go on. You
(44:24):
can find all of our prior episodes on both that
website and our YouTube channel. Follow us on social media
and scroll down to the bottom of the page and
sign up for our emailed newsletter and or our mailed newsletter.
This is information to keep you informed about scams and
how to protect yourself and help you develop the healthy
(44:45):
skepticism and the healthy scam prevention habits. It needs to
be a habit so when you are contacted, because you
will be contacted, you're going to be more app to
stop and pause and think about what's going on on
and verify the situation. So until next week, everybody, have
a wonderful, happy, safe New Year's and I'll see you
(45:08):
guys next Tuesday. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
Well, that's all the knowledge. For this episode, tune 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, and 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.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
You should seek the services.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
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 safeguard the
(00:45):
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
kfour HD Radio, Joyce Petrowski, founder of Rose, and her
(01:06):
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 (01:20):
Welcome back everyone to let's talk about scams. I'm your host,
Joyce Petrowski, founder and board president of Rose Resources Outreach
to Safeguard the elderly. You can find more information on
our website at Roseadvocacy dot org. On the homepage you'll
see all our social media channels and if you scroll
down to the bottom of the homepage, you'll find where
(01:41):
you can sign up for our newsletters. We have one
via email and one that we send out in the mail,
and the one via email. Every Tuesday morning at nine
fifteen am, Arizona time, you're going to get a tip
Tuesday in your email inbox. Now you might already know
that to and that's great, but it reinforces your healthy
(02:03):
scam prevention habits, and it reinforces scams. So that helps
you to be able to make scam prevention a habit.
So the next time you are contacted, you're going to
be more apt to take that pause, step back, think scams,
know what to do in order to determine if that
is a legitimate contact or if it's a scam. So
(02:25):
today we're going to talk about a couple FBI public
service announcements. We've got another credit breach. We're going to
make you aware of and then an update for iPhones.
So I'm going to share my screen to We're going
to first go into the FBI Public service announcements. Sorry
(02:47):
about that, and sorry that wasn't what I wanted to
get to here. It is. So this one came out
at the beginning of December. You might have already have
seen this on our social media page. But it's about
(03:08):
criminals using altered proof of life media to extort victims
in the virtual kidnapping for ransom scams. So criminals are
taking photos, you know, they're getting them through social media predominantly,
but they're looking all over the internet form and they're
altering the photos and to use as proof of life,
(03:33):
the fake proof of life photos, saying that they've kidnapped
that person and they're holding them for ransom. Now, a
lot of times it'll be that they're going to contact
them through text messages claiming that they've kidnapped their loved
one and demand a ransom. They'll express significant claims of
violence towards the loved one if the ransom's not paid immediately,
(03:57):
and then they criminals can send what appears to be
a genuine photo or video of the victims loved ones
upon but if you look at close inspection, you can
often see inaccuracies when you compare to the confirmed the
actual real photos of that loved one. So here's some
examples of what you might see in the altered photo
(04:22):
which they could be photoshopping, taking away a tattoo or
a scar. They could it could be inaccurate body proportions.
So another thing here is interesting. The FBI says that
the criminals will sometimes purposefully send the photos using a
timed message feature, so it limits the amount of time
(04:47):
that you have to analyze the images. So it's always
good to do a screenshot or save the the the
photo somehow save it on your device so you can
go back and really inspect it. So here's some tips
to protect yourself when posting the missing information online. Be
(05:12):
mindful that scammers may contact you with a fake information
regarding your loved one. Avoid providing personal information to strangers
while traveling. A lot of people will put on social
media that they're traveling. You know, I'm leaving from here
and I'm going to hear. That's giving the scammer in
(05:33):
the criminal that information to know that you're going to
be in this particular place, so then they can use
that for a fake kidnapping for ransom message to some
of your loved ones. You can have a codeword that
you only you and your loved ones know, and you
(05:53):
need to make sure that if you do have that
code word, that your loved ones know why the code
word is established and how important it is to keep
it confidential. There's that false sense of urgency which happens
in the majority of scams. They know that if they
(06:14):
can get you in that emotional state and keep everything
urgent and emotional, then you're not going to think rationally.
You're not going to stop and think. You're not going
to call your loved one to find out what's going on,
which is one of the ways you can verify is
to call your loved one, not using the phone, you know,
(06:35):
not using the text message, or you know, returning the
phone call that came in. And always report it. You know,
whether you've become a victim of the scam or you've
realized it and prevented yourself from being a victim. It's
always good to write everything down and then you can
(06:57):
report it to the FBI at their IC three dot Gov.
Now there's a few. There's one other thing that I
want to tell you that you can talk to because
scammers now they can They've been able to spoof caller
ID for a long time, but now through different ways,
they can actually spoof the phone number and make it
(07:17):
look like it's coming from your loved one's actual phone numbers.
So we've talked about the SIM swapping scam where scammers can,
through your cell phone provider, impersonate you and get them
to switch the SIM out to their benefit. So you
can talk to your cell phone carrier and ask them
(07:39):
about the ask them if they have a SIM protection
or a port out pin that you can have on
your account that helps prevent criminals from hijacking your phone
number or spoofing you know, the calls and texts. So
that port out pins going to be an added layer
(08:01):
of security like a multi factor authentication code, and the
SIM protection is going to be there to help prevent
that SIM swapping from happening. Now, another thing that you
can do is, you know a lot of times on
social media, Facebook in particular, it's on Instagram and TikTok too,
(08:21):
But I'm going to show you with Facebook how you
can make your account private. So this is my personal Facebook.
Yes you're gonna see that a friend of mine has
the birth of his fifth grandchild. But anyways, go over
here to where your photo is in the top right corner.
(08:41):
You're going to come down to settings and privacy. Then
you're going to go to the privacy center. And if
you look here, it says settings to help control your privacy.
So let's review those settings. Now we're going to come
up here and that's manage your passwords. Security issues end
(09:05):
to end encrypted. But if you come down here, you
can manage your audience settings, and that is who sees
the information on your Facebook. You go into here, and
again this is my personal accounts. So these settings are
going to be for me personally. I've got a lot
of them set to public because I have Roses business
(09:26):
page attached to my personal page, and that is a
public facing page. So don't copy everything every setting that
I have. You're going to want to go in and
determine what works best for you. But seriously, can think
about making your settings private so you can go into
your profile information here. I can tell you here only me,
(09:51):
only me, friends of friends only me. Now I've got
public information down here. Yeah, I could go in and
change this all to only me or friends who can
see my friends list on my profile only if you're
my friend, can you see the other friends? Who can
see the people in pages I follow? It's public because
(10:14):
of the Rose business page being attached post and stories?
Who can see those? So who can see my future posts? Again?
I have it set to public because of Rose's business
page and most of what I do on my personal
Facebook is share posts from Rose. Who can see my stories?
(10:35):
They're visible for twenty four hours on Facebook and messages.
I have it posted as friends and I'm going to
switch this to public because of Rose's Facebook page. But
that's how you go in and you can switch it
to custom where you can only show it to specific
(10:56):
people or just your friends and past post who can see.
If you want to limit who can see your past
post to only friends, you click limit and you can
go in and do that. Now. You can also come
down if you want to block people, or if you
want to see who you have blocked, it's going to
come in. You can add somebody to your blocklist that
(11:18):
says they won't tell them that you've blocked them. And
I have one person blocked. I'm not going to get
into it but and show you who that is. But
you can click on that and that'll show you who's
on your blocked list. Review tags before they appear in
your profile. So this is something that I have on
there that I want to I have it turned on
(11:41):
right here. I want to review the tags before they
appear on my profile. So if someone is posting a
story or doing a post and they are tagging me
in that post, I want to be able to review
it before I have it show up on my feed
(12:01):
or in my stories, because maybe it's something I don't
want to show a show on mine and I can
always hide it, or I look at it and say
no that's okay, and I say okay, post to my store,
you know, my feed. So I have that on because
I just don't want I don't want anybody to be
able to tag me and automatically have it show up
(12:22):
on my page. I'm going to review it first, so
that's done. So that's all you can do there. You
can go into these other privacy topics, more privacy resources,
all of that. You know, you scroll down here. You
can find out if you do ads your information and
(12:44):
permissions are here. Privacy profile, privacy settings for Facebook and
for Instagram. You can find those at the bottom. So
that's how you can go in and check out your
privacy settings for and I'm going to stop. Actually no,
I'm going to go back to the PSAs here. So
(13:05):
please go in, especially to your Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or
really any social media that you have out there, and
make a determination do you really need to have all
of this visible to the public. Scammers will find all
this information and they'll use it to their advantage. Change
as much as possible, if not all of it to private,
(13:30):
or if you're going to change it to only allowing
your friends to view. Be very careful. When you get
a friend request from somebody, ask yourself, do I already
have that person as a friend. One way you can
check is to go in and look at your friend's
list and you can search and search for that person's name,
and if they already show up, then that means somebody's
(13:52):
cloned their account. And no, you're not going to accept
that friend request, but you are going to let your
friend know that, hey, I got a friend request from you,
so someone's cloned your account. You could also take that
profile and report it as well. Say this friend request
(14:12):
doesn't show up in your current list of friends, well
then you need to ask yourself do I know this
person right? Do you have a lot of mutual context?
You can go in your mutual friends. You can go
in and see who the mutual friends are and make
a determination based on that. You know, add that to
(14:33):
your factors to determine if you want to accept this
person as a friend. Go in and look at their
their page, you know, is it even if you show
even if there's a few friends in common, go in
and look at that person's page and see if it
makes sense. Is it a new profile, is it they
(14:55):
only have a few posts, you know, just different things
like that that don't seem right. And just really do
your research before you accept someone as a friend that
you don't know. The next public service announcement was just issued.
Looks like about eleven days ago, So this was this
(15:17):
is an update to one that was released just six
months ago in May. So scammers are still impersonating senior
US officials in malicious messaging campaigns. So they've got activity
dating back to twenty and twenty three where scammers have
impersonated senior US state government, White House cabinet level officials
(15:39):
as well as members of Congress to target individuals, including
the officials family members, in personal acquaintances. So if you
happen to get a message claiming to be from a
Kerrent or former senior US official, don't assume it's automatically authentic.
And we'll look at some different recommendations. So here's an
(15:59):
example as to how it works. So the actor impersonates
a high ranking official and they use an encrypted application.
So Signal is an encrypted messaging app, and I know
Signal's been in the news at different points through over
the last year, but WhatsApp is encrypted as well. There's
(16:20):
a lot of different encrypted messaging apps out there. But
the scammers when they impersonate these high ranking officials, they'll
ask about US policy, They'll request copies of personal documents,
They'll want to note appointment to companies leadership. They'll propose
a meeting with high ranking officials. They'll request a wire transfer.
(16:43):
This is a big year coming up in twenty six
for election, and so are they going to impersonate them
saying that they're asking for a donation to their election campaign?
And they need it immediately in order to do something,
so wire transfer it. They'll discuss current events, all to
make it seem more realistic, and they've actually they're using
(17:07):
AI artificial intelligence generated voice messages. They'll do it through
text messaging. They'll do it through voicemails they claim to
come from that senior US official. Establish a report. The
actors contact the individual and briefly engage on a topic
the victim is versed on, with the request to move
(17:27):
communication to a secondary encrypted mobile messaging app. Once communication
is established on that encrypted messaging app, actors continue to
engage the victim in a number of ways. So they'll
discuss the topic current events, by lotter relations, asking about
a trade or security policy. They'll propose scheduling a meeting,
(17:52):
or maybe you're being considered for a nomination to a
company's board of directors. They've also requested victims to take
certain actions, such as provide an authentication code that allows
the actors to sync their device with the victims contact list.
Supply personally identifiable information and copies of sensitive personal documents,
maybe a passport, maybe a birth date, a social security number,
(18:15):
could be medical information. Wire funds under false pretenses It's
not always to an overseas financial institution. It could be
one here in the United States with the goal of
getting it overseas, request the victim to introduce them to
a known associate. Maybe they're using you to try to
(18:36):
get to someone else. But in most cases the FBI
has seen it come through like a text message such
as Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp. Those are all encrypted, they're all
legitimate encrypted apps, but again scammers are using them to
their advantage. So here's one they've redacted personal information. But
(19:00):
you know, just a message like that. So here's some recommendations.
You know, verify the identity of the person calling you
or sending you a text or voice message before responding,
do the research for the originating number the organization, Find
the person or the organization's legitimate number, and call them
(19:20):
and say, hey, are you or so and so trying
to message me about whatever the subject matter is. That's
how you're going to verify that authenticity. Carefully examine the
email addresses or the contact information, including phone numbers, even
if the phone number that they're using is legitimate because
(19:41):
they said they can spoof phone numbers. Now you still
want to call the legitimate phone number for whatever organization
or person. Don't return the phone call that came to you,
or click on the phone number and the text message.
You know you'll be able to contact them, you know,
(20:03):
maybe through an official website or the official phone number
and verify what's going on. You know, they do the
AI generated voice cloning. So yes, oh my gosh, it
sounds like the President of the United States, so it
must be him. No, his voice is all over the place.
(20:25):
They can take clips of it. They can make his
voice say whatever they want, So don't believe it just
because the voice sounds like the person they're purporting to be.
The artificial intelligence generated contact has advanced so much it's
often difficult to identify. You can always, you know, if
(20:45):
you believe it's a scam and you're not sure, you
could always contact your local FBI or your local law enforcement,
the Federal Trade Commission, you know, ask them for help.
So again, you know, be careful with sharing personal information
online or over the phone. Don't send money, gift cards,
(21:08):
crypto or other assets to people that you've just met
online or over the phone. Not clicking on links and
emails or text messages. It's very hard not to do
when you're on a phone on a mobile phone, because
sometimes just scrolling you've accidentally clicked on something, which is
(21:29):
again why you should always have strong antivirus anti malware
on your mobile device. You have to treat it as
a mobile computer. Don't just automatically download information that's on
a communication that you didn't initiate. And set up two
factor authentication on all the accounts that will allow it.
(21:53):
Now they're going to use social scammers are going to
use social engineering to get you to disclosure your code.
And we've talked about this before. They're going to pretend
to be the bank. We've determined fraud on your account,
and we need to verify it you that we're talking to,
So we're going to provide a code and you need
to read it back to us to verify you. Well,
(22:13):
that's they're using that because they've gotten to the point
they already know your log in and they know they
need this code to get into your account. And it
says where do you want the code sent? It shows
the last four digits of your phone number or the
last part of your email address, and they already know
your email address and your phone numbers, so they click
on it, they send it to you, you get it,
(22:35):
you turn around and give it to them. They're in
your account. They're changing all of your passwords, your logins,
turning off the two factor authentifica, all that type of stuff,
and they're going to drain your accounts. So be very
very careful that creating that secret word or phrase. It's
a good idea as well. It doesn't replace multi factor
(22:56):
authentification with the different accounts, but a secret worder phrase
that you have with your family members. Please just make
sure whoever has that in the family that they understand
the need to keep it confidential and why it is there,
and it is only used in order to verify identities
(23:17):
and give examples as to what could happen, because you
don't want someone in your family thinking, oh, well, that's
never going to happen, that's far fetched, and thinking and
then it doesn't really you know, it's not really that confidential,
and blah blah blah. You know, let them know that
these things happen to everybody, and scams are easy to
(23:40):
fall victim too, and this is exactly why we need
to keep this confidential. So that's it. On the PSAs
from the FBI I'm going to stop sharing now and
the next scam that we're going to talk about, and
you again might have seen this on our social media.
(24:01):
It's about it's specifically with iPhones, but they could also
use it for Android phones as well. This article that
I'm reading from talks about an iPhone scam because the
person that wrote in had an iPhone and it almost
(24:21):
tricked this person into sending their phone back. And they
do it a lot this time of year because a
lot of people get new or upgraded cell phones for
Christmas for the holidays, and so they know they have
a lot bigger pool of people that they could trick
into sending the phones back. So this in the article,
(24:43):
this is what someone had wrote in. It said, someone
called me and told me they sent the wrong iPhone.
They said they were from the company, a specific company,
which was the company the person had received the iPhone,
the new iPhone from, but they sent him the wrong
iPhone and needed to replace it. So this person was
(25:06):
to rip off the label on the box, tape it up,
and set it on his front porch steps and FedEx
was going to pick it up and they'd put a
label on it and just for his trouble, they would
send him one hundred dollars gift card. But what got
this this gentleman to start questioning things was the person
(25:29):
on the other end of the phone was just too anxious.
They called him again at seven am to make sure
that they would follow his instructions. Right after that, they
picked up the box on the steps, called the cell
phone company, who confirmed it was a scam. There's no
such things as refurbished I seventeen phones because they're brand new.
(25:51):
So he this person ended up calling the scammer back.
We don't suggest to do that, this is just what
they did, and had a few choice words and hung up.
But even since then, the scammers continue to call for
the same thing. So just because you realize it's a scam,
(26:17):
and the scammer knows that you've realized it, they're going
to continue to call because they got you to a
certain point and they think if they can just be
more convincing and get you into a deeper emotional state,
they're going to convince you to do this. So we
went through basically how it works is they focus on
(26:37):
people who have recently bought a new iPhone. Now again,
this could work with Android phones as well. The information
often comes from data broker sites, leaked purchase data, or
marketing lists that are sold online. Then the scammers can
spoof the carrier's phone number so the call seems legitimate.
(26:57):
They sound confident there's a shipping mistake. They insist the phone.
The phone must be returned right away. They reinforce urgency.
The carriers already scheduled. You just need to take the
label off the box, tape up the box with the
phone in it, leave it outside. It'll get picked up
and you know, FedEx, you whoever it is that they
(27:19):
use as a carrier. And again this is nothing against
the carriers, because you know they're the scammer's creating the
label with the carriers. So the carriers are thinking that
this is a legitimate pickup. But they they sorry, I
(27:39):
got sidetracked there. The device is gone, so the scammer
either resells it or strips it for parts. By the
time you realize something's wrong, recovery is unlikely. So flip
over and see what it says here. So here's some
(28:00):
red flags with this. You get that unsolicited call. That's
the first thing we talk about in our Anatomy of
a scam is that contact method and this one happens
to be a phone call and you need to return
your new iPhone, and they pressure you to act fast
(28:25):
because they don't want you to take time to think
about what's going on, because if you took paused and
you took time to think about it, you're going to think, well,
wait a minute, did I even request to have my
iPhone returned? Was there an issue with it? Did I
make a request? And you'll go, no, I didn't, and
then you're going to know it's a scam. So they're
(28:46):
going to be urgent about it, and they're going to
want you to act fast so you don't think about
what's going on. Instructing you to leave it sitting outside
for a carrier to pick up with no label on it.
That's just not how it works. And they're going to
give you a gift card for your cooperation doesn't work
(29:06):
that way either, and they continue with follow up calls,
you know, just to make sure that you're still emotional,
you're still acting fast and all that. So, so if
you are going to do a legitimate return for a product,
you're going to get a return shipping label. It either
(29:28):
would have already come in your delivery in case you
needed to return it, you just have to fill it
out and maybe activate it, you know, I don't know.
Other times you could go on your online account and
say I need to return this, do what you need
to do there, and then they email you a shipping
a return shipping label. You know, every company is different
(29:48):
on how they do their returns, and so don't just
leave a package out waiting, you know, with no return
label on it. The urgency anything that's urgent, especially like returns.
You know, if you've initiated the return, they're going to
tell you you've got once you once the return has
(30:11):
been approved, you've got x amount of days to return it.
It needs to be received by this date in our
office in order to process it and give you your
refund or your replace, whatever it is. They're going to
give you time to do it. Installing, you know, strong
antivirus again, you know we're going to continue to talk
about that. You should have strong antivirus anti malware on
(30:36):
all of your devices and devices includes your mobile phone
because they are mobile computers. And save any messages or
called details because then you can report this information whether
you've fallen victim to it or not. You can report
the information to law enforcement because you're not the only
one that has fallen victim or almost fallen victim to
(30:59):
this type of scan. And the more information law enforcement has,
the more pieces of the puzzle that they can put
together and find the people that are doing this and
share your share your experience with other people. We love
to have people come on the show as guests and
share their experiences. Whether you have fallen victim to a
(31:19):
scam or not, sharing your experience is very powerful and
it helps other people know what's going on. If you
have an experience and you want to share it with
us on this show, just reach out to us. Info
at Roseadvocacy dot org. Again, it's info at Roseadvocacy dot org.
(31:40):
There's a new data breach that was just published yesterday.
It affects social security numbers of five point eight million consumers.
So there's a company called seven hundred Credit and this
(32:00):
company the records are related to customers of auto dealerships
because auto dealerships that some auto dealerships use seven hundred
Credit services and so it would be that information that
got breached and they while seven hundred Credit has not
(32:26):
published an exhaustive list of every data field involved. The
company has confirmed that sole security numbers have been were
one of the US highly sensitive personal information that was exposed,
which again raises your risk of identity theft and financial fraud.
(32:51):
So again we're going to reiterate strong anti virus and
antimoware on all of your devices, including your mobile phones.
If you're still reusing passwords, you might want to switch
to a password manager. It is subscription based. We don't
have a recommendation for a specific one. You can just
(33:12):
go on and google the best password Managers for twenty
twenty five, or we're right around the corner is twenty
twenty six the best Password Managers for twenty twenty six.
There's a lot of legitimate tech companies that have gone
through and on a regular basis they evaluate password managers,
antivirus software, credit monitoring companies, and they give you a
(33:34):
list of their top rated ones, their pros and cons,
the subscriptions, and sometimes they might even have discount codes.
But when you are googling, if you're going to Google
that or whatever you are going to google, just know
that when you look under the heading of and I'm
going to share my screen again and show you guys here.
(34:01):
So like, I'm going to go on and I'm going
to Google best Password Manager twenty twenty five. Okay, you
see here where cyber News comes up, but right here
underneath the title, it says sponsored. Now, a lot of
legitimate companies will have sponsored ads. They can buy ads
(34:21):
on Google. Nonprofits can do it too, and it's legitimate.
But scammers can do it also, And so don't just
click on the first one you come to. If you're like, Okay,
I recognize cyber News and that is a legitimate company
and I know their website. Will then just go directly
to Cybernews's website and search on their website for the
(34:44):
best password Managers of twenty twenty five. You'll get their article,
or just keep scrolling down. Okay, sponsored again, I'm going
to keep going down copilot. That's the artificial intelligence. Wired is,
to my knowledge, a legitimate company. If you already use
them and you know their website, go directly there again
(35:06):
you come down here. Now, these are not sponsored. And
I actually use Tom's Guide as a reference for some
certain things, and so I know that it's Tom's Guide
dot com. But again, if you want to If you
know that that's the actual website that you're looking at,
(35:27):
then you know you can click on it. But the
better thing to do is you know the actual website, well,
then let's make a let's go in and go Tom's
Guide dot com and go in here and go directly
to the Tom's Guide instead of clicking on that link.
Because if you saw it had a US after it
and I don't know, but I know this is Tom's Guide,
(35:50):
so and then you can go in here and you
can use the search bar to search for whatever article
it was you were looking for. So that's that's a
better way to search there. The other thing you could
do is a lot of companies now are have the
option of using a past key instead of a password,
(36:13):
and a past key is biometric information. A lot of times,
like when I log into Amazon, it'll ask me do
I want to set up a pass key? You can
set it up and I do. Use a password manager
and it will allow me to have the past key
in my Amazon account file in my password manager. It's
biometric information, the facial scan, a fingerprint, you know, something
(36:40):
like that, and those are security experts have said those
are a lot more safer than passwords, because every year
they do they do a survey and the majority of
us reuse passwords, and a lot of people still use
password one, two three, which is just like giving people
(37:02):
the keys to your house and your car and saying,
come in and do whatever you want, whatever you want.
But if you're going to reuse a password, you have
to ask yourself, if I'm going to reuse this password,
what damage can be done? If someone figures it out
on the first account I used it, They're going to
plug it in to all these other accounts. They have
a software system that's going to do that, and now
(37:25):
they're going to have access to those accounts other accounts
that you've reused the password on. So you've got to
ask yourself that question. You could sign up for credit
monitoring services. Again, those are subscription based. You can do
the same research that we talked about with the password managers.
You could put a credit freeze on You have to
(37:46):
go through all three credit reporting agencies Experience, TransUnion, and Equifax.
Quickest way to do it is to set up an
online account with them and you can go in and
freeze it and it just stays frozen. And that is
probably one of the best preventative measures for identity theft,
because when someone goes to take a loan out in
(38:07):
your name, whoever they're taking the loanout with, is going
to run a credit check on your name and sold
security number, and if your credit's frozen at all three
of the agencies, it's going to come back that we
can't give you any information on their credit because it's frozen.
So and then you'll get a letter from that company
(38:30):
saying we're not we can't issue you credit. You need
to unfreeze your credit and then come back and talk
to us. That's happened to my husband many times over
the last twenty years, and we're like great, because we
didn't ask for that credit, so his information's been out
there a long time. Some people don't want to freeze
their credit for a variety of different reasons. So if
(38:54):
you're not going to freeze your credit, then monitor your
credit reports on a regular basis so that way you
can find any fraudulent credit quickly and start the process
of identity theft and get that off of your account.
(39:16):
What other things are on here? There are personal data
removal companies. They are subscription based. Just understand that, Yeah,
you can sign up for him. It's great to have them.
They will constantly scan, you know, continuously scan the web
for your personal information because yes, they can have it
(39:37):
all taken off as of this point in time, but
give it twenty four hours and there might be some
of your information might pop back up. So they're going
to have to continually do it to continually get get
this your information off off of the Internet. The last
thing I want to talk about today is Apple has
(39:59):
a new security update with UH and I'm not going
to go into detail on what it is that was compromised.
There's a lot of code and stuff involved, but the
the the vulnerabilities that were tracked have been exploited in real,
(40:20):
real world world attacks, and it says they were limited
to specific targeted individuals. It doesn't say who the specific
targeted or if it was like a specific category of
people so or specific industry or something like that. So basically,
(40:44):
Apple's release patches, they've released the updates across their supported
operating system, so it's across all of their devices, the iOS,
the iPad os, the mac os, Safari, watch os, tvOS,
vision os, all of it. So if you have updates
that haven't been installed. Please go in and install those
(41:07):
updates on all of your devices that are Apple and
that includes any maybe home devices that you have that
might be Apple as well. And you can set up
your accounts to automatically do these updates on a regular basis.
Look into setting that up as well so you can
install those your They can be installed as soon as
(41:30):
soon as the updates come out and are made available.
Let's see that is it on that one. So just
to summarize, make sure you do all of your software updates.
(41:51):
Set your devices to do those automatic updates so you
don't have to worry that you might forget that you
want to go in and do it. If if you
don't want to set up for automatic updates, put it.
Put it. Put a reminder on your phone once a
week or however often you want, if you want to
look at it every day, every other day, twice a week,
(42:12):
once a week however often, put a reminder on your
phone and then go in to all of your devices,
and that includes your home devices as well, anything Apple related,
but you can do it for Android as well. You
can do it for all of your devices that are
connected to the internet to go in and do these
updates because yes, they might have some new features out
(42:32):
for you, but they also are going to have patches
for security flaws that they have found after the previous
updates were put out. And don't forget. No matter what
type of contact you get, always make sure that you
take a pause, You step back, You think about the situation.
(42:55):
You verify the situation before you can even begin to
believe that it it's true. And go into your social
media accounts and look at your privacy settings and change
as much as possible, if not all, of it to
private so it limits who can see your information. And
don't just automatically accept friend request. Look and see if
(43:19):
they're already your friends, then you know that their account's
been cloned. If they're not already your friend, you know,
look at the look at the the friend requests, look
at the accounts profile, see what's on there? Are they
posting doesn't make sense? Do you have a lot of
mutual friends? Who are the mutual friends? Do your research
(43:42):
and find out what's going on before you just automatically
accept those friend requests. I am still working on getting
a guest. Hopefully i'll have them next week for to
share their scam experience. So until then, remember you can
go on our website at Rosadvocacy dot org. All the
(44:04):
social media channels are there. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel.
We are more than halfway there to one hundred subscribers.
We want to get to one hundred because it opens
up some more things on our account, so please subscribe
to our YouTube channels. We also have a Let's Talk
about scams dot com website you can go on. You
(44:24):
can find all of our prior episodes on both that
website and our YouTube channel. Follow us on social media
and scroll down to the bottom of the page and
sign up for our emailed newsletter and or our mailed newsletter.
This is information to keep you informed about scams and
how to protect yourself and help you develop the healthy
(44:45):
skepticism and the healthy scam prevention habits. It needs to
be a habit so when you are contacted, because you
will be contacted, you're going to be more app to
stop and pause and think about what's going on on
and verify the situation. So until next week, everybody, have
a wonderful, happy, safe New Year's and I'll see you
(45:08):
guys next Tuesday. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
Well, that's all the knowledge. For this episode, tune 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, and until then, feel free to reach out
to Joyce and let's talk about scams.
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