You must be living right. An unexpected $2,500 check with your name on it just landed in your mailbox. Come on. You know it’s too good to be true. You’ve never even heard of the company that sent it. But a greedy little part of you wants to make a run for the bank and [...]
The White House is considering a plan to beef up national home loan modification efforts to the tune of $30 billion in credit to struggling homeowners (it wants big banks to pay for it, but that’s another story). If the government gets its way, expect loan modifications to rise exponentially, but homeowners should temper their enthusiasm – [...]
The Better Business Bureau and federal authorities are warning consumers to be on their guard against fake charities trying to scam money in the name of Mississippi flood relief. While neither the BBB’s Wise Giving Alliance nor the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team released specific details on possible scams, but both issued general warnings for consumers. US-CERT [...]
If you receive an email claiming to contain photos or videos of Osama bin Laden’s death, delete it immediately. The FBI is warning computer users to be on the alert for virus-laden emails that trick consumers into opening them by promising to show images or video of bin Laden’s recent shooting by U.S. Navy SEALS in [...]
It’s a scam that’s designed to play on grandparents’ heart strings, and the latest version of it has prompted a national awareness campaign as well as consumer alerts from two state attorneys general. It works like this: A con artist calls senior citizens, posing as a grandchild in need and asks for money to be sent [...]
In the past four months, caches of customer e-mail addresses, not banking and credit card information, have become the key target of data thieves. The goal: Use the legitimate e-mail addresses and the specific companies their owners have business relationships with to get people to buy worthless goods or to infect their PCs. The recent [...]
Top banks, retailers and service companies have begun warning consumers to be on high alert for spoofed e-mails that may attempt to coax them into clicking on viral attachments or harmful Web links. This follows the theft of potentially millions of individual customer names and e-mail addresses from Epsilon, a Dallas-based firm that provides e-mail [...]
Could playing video games give someone access to your credit card? It happened to one local family thanks to a hacker.
In the wake of Japan’s quake crisis, many Americans are eager to help. But they must be aware of scammers seeking to take advantage of them. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said they are already investigating one potential scheme where fraudsters misrepresent themselves as the British Red Cross and seek donations in the form of [...]
That next text message could cost you—and I’m not talking about a cell phone charge. Scam artists are hard at work with a technique called “SMiShing.” The name comes from SMS, or short message service. Texting is a form of SMS, and smishing is like phishing (e-mail scams), only via cell. Maybe you’ve already been [...]
Spending money wisely, from home repair to shopping
