WEBVTT
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This program is designed to provide general information with regards
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to the subject matters covered. This information is given with
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the understanding that neither the hosts, guests, sponsors, or station
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are engaged in rendering any specific and personal medical, financial,
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legal counseling, professional service, or any advice.
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You should seek the services.
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Of competent professionals before applying or trying any suggested ideas.
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The information contained in this podcast is intended for informational
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purposes only and is not a substitute for individual professional
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legal advice. The podcast information was carefully compiled from vetted
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sources and references. However, Rose Resources outreach to safeguard the
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elderly cannot guarantee that you will not fall victim to
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a scam. Let's talk about scams. It's the must listen
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show for anyone who wants to protect themselves and their
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loved ones from scams. Every Tuesday am Pacific time on
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kfour HD Radio, Joyce Petrowski, founder of Rose, and her guests.
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We'll provide valuable insights and practical tips on how to
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recognize and protect yourself from scams. And now here is
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your host, Joyce Petrowski.
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Welcome back, everybody, for this episode of Let's Talk About Scams.
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I'm Joyce Petrowski, founder and president of Rose Resources Outreach
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to Safeguard the Elderly. You can find more information on
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our website and more resources at Rosadvocacy dot org. You
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can also sign up for our newsletters. We send one
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via email. We also do one that we send in
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the mail. You can find those links right on the
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homepage along with the links for our social media LinkedIn Facebook, Instagram,
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and the YouTube page. So today I want to talk
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to you about an anatomy of a scam. So when
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we do these presentations to the seniors, when we first started,
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you know, we would sit there and go through probably
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about I don't know, five to eight different scams that
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have a tendency to be the the top scams in
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the senior the older adult population, and it never failed. Right,
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we go through the presentation, We talk about these scams,
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talk about you know, some specifics about each one, like
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in a romance scam, an investment scam, you know, email compromise,
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pig butchering, tech support, a lot of different ones. Will
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we leave the presentation and then lo and behold, we
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find out there's five.
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New scams out there.
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So about a year and a half ago, we created
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what's called an Anatomy of a scam. It's an infographic
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where we really said, we need to just explain scams
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in general. So if people can understand just the basics
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of a scam in general, then they're going to be
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better app to be able to recognize a scam, no
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matter what kind it is. So I want to pull
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that Anatomy of scam up on the screen so you
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guys can see it. So there's three different parts there.
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The first part is initiating contact and there's a variety
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of different ways. Goes over to the second part, which
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is creating a compelling reason to act. This is where
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the emotions come in. And then it gets into the
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third part, which is requesting payment. Now, sometimes, yes, you know,
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scammers are out there looking for personal identifiable information, but
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they're doing that because they want to be able to
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take your identity and get money. So the bottom line
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is is they're always out looking for money. And then
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in the middle there's an urgency and with the majority
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of the scams, it's urgent from the minute they initiate
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contact and you engage all the way till you get
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done sending them the money. But there are a few
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that it's the request for money doesn't come so quickly.
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So we can take that.
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Down now and I'm going to go through the three
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different parts in it. So the first part we talked
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about was initiating. The scammers have to initiate contacts somehow,
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and this right here is the biggest reason, or not
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the reason, the biggest way that scammers are going to
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initiate contact. Just about everybody has a cell phone and
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the majority of them are connected to their online right.
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You get your emails on there, You can get on
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social media, you download apps, you know, whether you play
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games or you have movie apps that you watch movies
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or stream shows. Social media apps are on there. You know, messaging,
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you know where you can not just call somebody, but
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you can send them a text message, you can take pictures,
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all kinds of different things that you can do on
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these phones. Well, that phone provides a lot of ways
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that a scammer can contact you. They can email you,
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they can message you. And it's not just the text
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message that automatically comes, you know, with your phone. There's
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a lot of these other messaging apps. The one I
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think that's probably the most popular is WhatsApp. I don't
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really use any of them, so I don't know a
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lot of the other ones. But they're more of what
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they call a private chatting. But they can also you know,
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send you a message if you're if you're posting things
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on social media, they'll start commenting on your post and
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then it never fails.
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They they always are.
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Having a problem friending you, so they want you to
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friend them, which is really just a ploy so they
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can actually look more legitimate to the social media platform
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that you're the one that's friending them. They're not out
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trying to friend all these other people, but they will though.
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I can't tell you how many times I get messages
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on posts that I make and I just look at
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them and I go, yep, that's a scammer, and I
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just hold my finger down on it as long as
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there's no links in there, but just hold your finger
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down on it and it comes up and you can
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delete it.
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You can report it as well.
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I think it'll say report and then you can delete
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after that. But it's just good to always delete them.
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Same with text messages, right, you get an and this
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is contact unexpected contact that comes. You're not expecting a
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text message from your friend. You know, you're not expecting
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a text message to come through from Amazon, or from
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the post Office, or from Social Security or the one
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that's been going around lately is toll fees, saying that
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you were on a toll road and you owe some
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money for toll fees. You know, there's a lot of
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different ways they do it. And they can call you
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and they can make that, but you know, the caller
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ID they can They've been able to spoof that for
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a long time. They can make it look like the
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police department's calling you. They can make it look like
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Social Security is calling you some federal office. They can
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make it look like your friend is calling you when
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it's not actually your friend. They're just they've somehow been
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able to get into your contacts and see your friend's names,
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and they're able to use those as the caller ID.
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And so, I mean, it's happened to me. You know,
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it's like, oh my gosh, I haven't talked to Stephanie
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in a long time, and so here lo and behold,
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she calls, So I answer the phone and it's not her, right,
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It's so it's very it's very hard these days to
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determine just when that contact comes in, if it's real
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or if it's fake. So we talked about email, we
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talked about text messages, phone calls. Social media is a
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big one. Lots of people are on socialcial media. There's
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all different kinds of social media platforms. Scammers are in those.
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You know, they're creating fake profiles and a lot of times,
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you know, at least the fake ones that I've come across,
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when they're preparing to be when they're pretending to be
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a man they have, they're impersonating someone that's been in
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the service that just seems to kind of be their
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mo you know. And if they're impersonating some woman, they're
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going to find, you know, a really beautiful woman that
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would just make somebody want to be friends with them
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and not think twice, you know, to click that friend
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request button or to accept a friend request. So social media,
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you know, they hide out there. They also if you
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play the online games. So like, for instance, I play
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an online game, it's not it's an app that I
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have and I play some games on it, but I'm
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not playing in real time against people where I can
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sit and have a conversation with people as I'm playing
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against them. That's online, and scammers will hide out in
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there and they'll strike up relationships in there. If you're
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on a dating site, you know, they set up profiles
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on dating sites that they can find you online. Is
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really is apt to have a scammer involved in there
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someplace and they are still using the mail I received
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from one of our supporters yesterday, I received an email
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that says, hey, have you seen this scam? And I
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open it up and it's about it pretends to be
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coming from Walmart, and it was something that was sent
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in the mail to her and it had Walmart on
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there with the logo, and it was about being one
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of the mystery shoppers. And it actually had a check
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attached to it made out in her name and her address,
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and it was for over four thousand dollars. Well, basically
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what they were saying is they're in there is you know,
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you need to text these two numbers to activate everything,
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and then you get to keep seven hundred dollars as
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your commission for being a mystery shopper. And then if
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you do these things within I think it said twenty
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four hours or forty eight hours it was a really
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short timeframe that you get an extra fifty dollars and
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then the rest of it. They wanted you to go
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out and buy six different gift cards five hundred dollars each,
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and then they wanted you to then they were going
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to send you this survey to answer these questions and
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you know, send the information, you know, with the gift
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cards over to them. And it's just a big scam.
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And so what I I mean, it looked like a scam.
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If you look down at the bottom of the letter,
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which will be on our social media today, so you'll
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see a copy of that letter if you want to
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look at it. You look at the email address that's
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down at the bottom of it. And I don't remember
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the what's to the left of the ad sign, but
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it was a Gmail account, you know. It was something
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like Walmart's Secret Mystery Shopper at gmail dot com. Now
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we all know Walmart doesn't use Gmail, right, so that's
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a big red flag there. Yes, there was some grammar stuff,
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you know, bad grammar going on in there, which I
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was really quite shocked because with artificial intelligence these days,
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the chat GBT, you can actually get that program to
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write a really nice letter for you and then use
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that the scammer could use that. So I was a
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little shocked that there was some bad grammar in there,
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but you know, it can still happen, so they are
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still using the mail, so you just got to be
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careful with that contact. And it's that unexpected contact, right,
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And that's the majority of the time. Now, there are
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also times when say, for instance, a scammer was able
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to hack into your friend's email account and so now
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they're sending emails out as your friend, So it's coming
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from your friend or family member whatever their email address.
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So you look at that and you're like, no, that's
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their email address, that's them, but it's really the scammer
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because they've hacked into it and taken it over, and
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your friend or family member might not know quite yet
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that it's happen. So that's where you got to kind
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of look at the message, right, and you got to go,
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does this really make sense? Is this how they're usually conversing?
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They've never asked me for money before. What's going on?
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You know, it's always good to call that friend or
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family member, you have their verified phone number and just
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check it out. Hey, were you emailing me about this.
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I had this happen with someone I needed to do
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a background check on yesterday who does some of our presentations,
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and the background check company sent her an email saying,
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you know, we need you to fill this information out
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and it was going to have personal sensitive information because
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it's running a background check, and she wasn't going to
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just do it. So she calls me and says, hey,
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was this you that sent this through the background check company?
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And I'm like, yep, absolutely, that was me. I just
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put it through. So she verified that that was a
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valid email that I did that, even though you know, earlier,
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earlier that morning, I had sent an email to her saying, hey,
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I'm going to be doing this right, she still called
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and verified. So that was her way to protect herself
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from not going in and giving all this personal information
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out until she knew for sure it was legitimate.
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So in those instances, you know where.
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The scammer might you know, take over someone's email address
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or you know, take over the phone number. Somehow it
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could come across with that phone number. So you still
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need to be really careful in those instances and just
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always have not in a bad way to always but
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what we talk about is the healthy skepticism. Having that
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healthy skepticism because you don't want to be giving information