You may be on guard today, keeping an eye out for pranks and practical jokes, but scam artists don’t stick to a conventional holiday schedule. The Internet provides fertile ground for a proliferation of fraud, from the benign (“forward this email to eight of your friends and get something free!”) to the malicious (“send money now to help this unfortunate person.”)
Email scams often disguise themselves as communication from a company saying it needs your Social Security or account information. The scammer then uses that information to access your accounts or open new ones. A legitimate business will never ask for confidential information via email, and you should never offer it as a way to confirm your identity. Because of these types of scams, many financial institutions will ask you to establish an identifying question, such as your favorite teacher’s name, as a code for verifying your identity.
Email scams can also take the form of grassroots fundraising efforts, usually for someone at arm’s length – the sister’s husband’s uncle’s friend’s daughter who needs surgery. Because charity has become so ingrained in American culture, we often think nothing of sending off a check for $25 to these requests. Unless you can verify the identity of the recipient – and ensure your donation gets directly to that person – you should focus your donations on causes you can verify as legitimate.
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Use caution even when doing business online with legitimate companies. Consider using a credit card – not a debit card attached to your bank account – for online purchases, and set a fairly low limit for that card. If the information should be stolen or hacked, the thief won’t have your bank account information and won’t get far using the credit card either.
Email provides just one avenue for identity theft and fraud. If you receive a proposal, offer or solicitation you find interesting or appealing, but can’t verify it, you may want to consider contacting a Certified Financial Planner, who can help you research the source, and perhaps find a better way to invest or donate your hard earned money.
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FINANCIAL FACTS
A Majority But Not All – Medicare pays for 60 percent of the average health care costs for an American senior (source: American Journal of Law & Medicine, BTN Research).
Living In The Moment – Forty-three percent of American workers surveyed are not saving (or their spouse is not saving) for their future retirement (source: Employee Benefit Research Institute, BTN Research).
Up Just One Year – The normal retirement age (NRA) in 2013 to be eligible for full Social Security benefits is 66 years. The NRA in 1950 to be eligible for full Social Security benefits was 65 years (source: Social Security Administration, BTN Research).
