By Cheryl Thurston
Ready to do your holiday shopping? Do you have lots of folks to shop for? Checking off the names on your list is gratifying and satisfying. You might find the perfect gift for each and every loved one this year. There are scads of new and improved gadgets on the market to suit every taste, from all of your favorite retailers.
There are some clever ads that speak right to your interests during the holiday shopping season, but not every ad is legitimate. Be careful not to lose your privacy or identity while shopping, especially when you shop online. The Internet provides us with quick access to everything, and makes shopping easy and convenient. However, it is also open to abuse by the unscrupulous. Scammers like you even more when you are in a generous shopping mood, and they are everywhere.
Beware
In the digital age, most scams come directly to our phones through emails, text messages, or advertising calls, since people normally have their phones close at hand 24/7/365. Have you been contacted about your car’s extended warranty? Received an email or a text informing you that one of your accounts has been hacked, asking you to update your personal or financial info? Do you get sales calls from unfamiliar numbers when you are working or having dinner? How much time and effort have you spent dealing with those?
How many people make demands on your time in a regular day? Your time is valuable because it is your life. A minute here, 5 minutes there, it all adds up. Why allow someone you don’t know to take your time and attention away from the people and things you wish to spend it on? Especially if “they” are just trying to scam you?
What you can do
The CAN-SPAM Act, of 2003, set out certain requirements for commercial emails to give consumers more protection and control over advertiser’s access to their digital data. Advertisers are not permitted to use misleading information in headers or subject lines, and must identify the email as an advertisement. Legitimate sales emails must include an opt-out method and the physical address of the business.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has made it easy to report spam and scams that come through emails with a tab in your email program. You can limit the number of unsolicited sales calls and texts you get by registering your personal phone number in the Do Not Call list by calling, 1-888-382-1222, or at the following website: National Do Not Call Registry There, you can register your personal number and report spammers and scammers. If you are still receiving calls or texts 30 days after registering, the offending number can be tracked and the owner can be sued by the internet service provider.
Why go to all the trouble to report unwanted and unsolicited calls, texts and emails? Why not?
The relentless onslaught should stop somewhere and you can do something about that with a little bit of effort.
It’s worse than you thought
According to the Statista website, nearly half of all emails worldwide are spam, (including phishing and spoofing). The largest number of which are sent from the USA. In 2021 about 8.5 billion spam emails originated in this country. China, Russia, Brazil and India each had almost as many because phone numbers and email addresses are valuable bits of information. That’s why it’s a good idea to join the do not call list and set up your spam filter in your email program.
The most common spam emails relate to sales, which accounts for about 36% of all spam, financial matters account for about 26% and adult content (pills and porn) accounts for about 31%. No matter how you slice it, spam emails are big business and the effort to make online sales is the daily work product of many shady individuals all over the world. Conversion rates on cold pitches are low, at about 2%, so there’s an effort to generate volume.
When it comes to businesses being vulnerable to spam and scams, 83% of them fall victim to employees clicking on links or opening suspicious attachments. It can happen to anyone, anywhere.
Simple reporting
Email providers like Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo include buttons to mark messages as junk mail or report spam. Most web mail providers and ISPs want to cut off spammers who abuse their systems. You can also report it to the FTC at http://www.ReportFraud.ftc.
You can report scam and spam text messages, by forwarding the text to 7726 (spam), reporting it on the FTC fraud website, and reporting it as fraud to your cell phone carrier. You aren’t the only one who wants it to stop.
You can get all the details online at https://www.donotcall.gov o
For TTY users the number is 866-290-4236.
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