Scam Targeting Veterans, Evil Twin Wi-Fi attack, and More!

0:00 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. You should seek the services 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 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 at m Pacific time on K four HD Radio, Joyce Petrowski, founder of Rose, and her guests will provide valuable insights and practical tips on how to recognize and protect yourself from scams.

1:14 And now here is your host, Joyce Petrowski. Hi, everyone, welcome back. Joyce Petrowski, President and founder of Rose Resources Outreach to safeguard the elderly. You can find more information on our website at Roseadvocacy dot org. You'll find our social media channels. Scroll down to the bottom of the homepage you will see where you can sign up for our email and or mailed newsletter. The mailed newsletter comes out at the beginning of the month. The comprehensive email newsletter comes out at the beginning of the month. But we also send out a weekly Tuesday Tip on Tuesday mornings at nine point fifteen am. This is a great way to help keep scam prevention at the top of your mind, not to scare you, but to develop your healthy skepticism. So when you get that contact, you think scam and you are more apt to pause, take a break, check things out, verify the situation, verify what's going on, and then help prevent yourself from falling victim to a scam. So again, you can find those signups at the bottom of the home page on Rosadvocacy dot org.

2:36 Social media channels are there as well, and this seems like a reoccurring theme every radio show. Our Facebook is still down between myself and one other person. We are trying to get Facebook to work with us. They're saying that I should be able to find the page and manage it, but I can't find it. So if you guys out there, if you're able to find it somewhere, could you let me know because I'm trying everything on Facebook and I can't find Rose's business page. So hopefully soon we'll be able to work through this with Facebook. Today's going to be a shorter show. I'm going to go over some updates, some new scams that we found out about, and then there's a new law that went into effect a little over a week ago regarding cryptocurrency in those cryptocurrency ATMs. So the first thing is jeep In Chrysler's parent company, Stillantis has confirmed that they have been involved in a data breach. So it looks to be one of their third party use third party companies they use was hacked into. But they are confirming that contact information has was breached through them. Yep, they clarified that only contact information was taken because that third party

4:07 platform does not host any financial or deeply sensitive personal data. So that's a great thing. But here's some things you can do. If you think you might be affected through Jeeper Chrysler data breach, you can hire a company to clean up your personal information from the web. Just keep in mind it is a paid subscription. There's a lot of companies out there that do it, so just search on the internet the best companies to take your information offline in twenty twenty five and see what comes up and see which one works best for your situation. Just also keep in mind that once you take everything off, it's not a one and done. Your information does end up back out there at some point, so it's probably best to keep that subscription going with them so they will continually monitor the web for your information. When they see it, they will take it off the internet. And just also be careful. You could end up getting more phishing emails or the text messages things like that. So you're going to want to make sure you have a strong antivirus and anti malware on all of your devices, including your phone, because that is a mobile computer that's going to help you be able to detect malicious sites and prevent you from going there. You might want to consider using a password manager, because the best security with passwords is to have a strong pass, different password for

5:41 every single account you have, and a strong password has to be made up of lowercase and uppercase letters, numbers, and symbols, And unfortunately, there is not a standard set of symbols that all companies will allow. Every company is different with what symbols they'll allow. Make sure you have two factor authentication or multi factor authentication enabled on all of your financial accounts and any other accounts that will allow it. A lot of companies now nowadays have that as an added layer of security. Sometimes they don't prompt you to set it up when you set your account up.

6:24 You need to go into privacy and settings, find it and turn it on. You probably will have options whether you want to use it. Get your code via text or email. That is less secure than using an authenticator app. Microsoft has an authenticator app, and so does Google. And the reason is is because when you use those authenticator apps, those codes only last for like thirty seconds. When you're getting them texted or emailed, they could last like five minutes or seven or eight minutes, So they're out there longer for someone. Gives someone more time to try to get those codes from you. But just keep in mind if you are using those authenticator apps, and you decide to upgrade your phone or get a new mobile phone, make sure whoever is transferring that data that those authenticator apps and all of the data in the authenticator apps transfer over. You might want to consider looking into getting an identity theft subscription if you're concerned about identity theft, maybe you've been a victim of identity theft in the past.

7:35 There's a lot of companies out there that offer this. It's a paid subscription basis, so again you're going to have to look up on the web the best identity theft protection packages for twenty twenty five. You'll get these tech companies that constantly monitor these companies and evaluate them, and they'll give you the information on their top picks. And the nice thing about those identity theft protections descriptions is they usually will have a certain amount of money available to you if you are a victim of identity theft that you can use to pay what you know, fees, whatever it is you need to get your identity back.

8:18 You're going to want to regularly monitor your account for any unusual activity. Consider freezing your credit as well, if you've not already done so especially if you do not want to freeze your credit, which is a personal choice, then make sure you monitor your credit report on a regular basis. So that's it for that data breach. There's a I was looking at the cyber guy website on some recent scams that they talked about, and there's one that's a bank pop up scam. It's titled could bank pop up scam could empty your account in seconds. So this gentleman had wrote in that he had had his financial account open, he was doing transactions. In the middle of a transaction, up pops a box in the middle of the full page showing the company's logo. It looked real, he said. The first time he fell for it, it asked for his email address to confirm, then his phone number, and then he saw for about four or five seconds of the screen named credit Donkey. At that point he realized it was a scam, and he immediately closed down his computer and called the number on the back of his financial card to report it. So his quick thinking likely saved him from a lot of damage. So this is called an injection scam, and this is how they

9:49 trick you. It hijacks your browser and overlays a fake log in or verification screen because it appears while you're already logged in to your financial account, the fake page looks real and authentic. In this gentleman's case, the appearance of credit donkey flashing on the screen was a red flag, but that doesn't always happen. Scammers will sometimes abuse legitimate looking redirects to convince victims they're dealing with their bank. The real aim is to capture your log in credentials and to trick you into handing over your two factor authentication code. So one thing to note is that the web injections cannot occur on their own. For this type of scam to appear, there's almost always already malicious software running on your computer or browser, so a virus that's just quietly monitoring traffic, and then it sees when you are logged into your bank account. So basically that means your device is already compromised. Again, as I said before with breach, one of the one of the protection tools is having a very good robust antivirus anti malware software on all of your devices, and that includes your mobile phone.

11:12 Your cell phone, we treat it as a phone, but we have to understand it as a mobile computer. It's hooked up to the internet. We do a lot of things on our mobile phone. Some people do a lot of banking on their phone. There's probably credit cards saved, you know. For instance, if you have an iPhone, you might have Apple Pay on there and you have a credit card associated. You might do your Amazon orders on your phone, and there's a credit card in your Amazon account, So make sure you have that antivirus anti malware on your cell phone as well. You're going to want to monitor your accounts if you think you've been if your financial account may have been exposed, you're going to want to change your past word to that account immediately. And if by some chance you have reused that password. Remember you're not supposed to reuse passwords, but if by some chance you have reused that password that's been compromised, you need to go to every account you've reused it, and you need to update those passwords too. And you're going to want to get a hold of your bank right away so they know that there's a possible fraud on your account and they can put the necessary measures in place to help protect you. We said before, you might want to consider Using a password manager helps with all those storing all your logins so you don't have to remember or write down all of your passwords. You only

12:45 have to remember the password to your password vault, because if you lose that, not even the company you are subscribed to for that password manager has access to the password for your vault, so you're going to want to keep that in the safe place. We talked about removing your data from different sites. It's a paid subscription. Let's see what else they say here. Enable multi factor authentification. That is a reoccurring protection theme and a lot of different a lot of different scams. Freeze your credit. If you haven't frozen your credit, you might want to seriously consider freezing your credit at this point. If you still don't want to do it again, it's a personal choice.

13:33 You are going to want to monitor your credit reports on a regular basis, and we talked about identity theft monitoring as well. Some other things you want to consider is always make sure you're logging into your bank's verified website before you do any personal banking. And keep your browser and your operating system so if you use Google, keep it updated, keep on your if you're doing it on your cell phone, your laptop, your computer. Whenever there's updates excuse me to the operating system, make sure you you install those updates. And never enter any personal details on pop up screens, no matter how real it looks.

14:22 Always make sure you are on your bank's legitimate website, not going through pop up screens. So that's it with that one. Let's see this one we just had in our newsletter that went out on Saturday, our emailed newsletter. So there are This is about fake Wi Fi networks and this is specifically how it can steal your data while you're traveling. Now, this is called an evil twin Wi Fi attack, So how does that happen? So a scammer, a bad actor is going to mimic the airlines Wi Fi, whatever airline you're flying, They're going to mimic that Wi Fi with a hotspot, an evil twin hotspot. So when you go on to get onto the airline's Wi Fi network, you're going to see multiple networks with the same name, but your phone or your laptop often connects to the one with the stronger signal and that, unfortunately is usually the attackers. So having the anti malware, anti virus on your phone, your laptop, all your devices. That's going to help you recognize if you do try to connect to the evil twin WiFi. So basically once if you do connect,

15:55 you're redirected to a fake login or landing page and then it gets the It gets your email address, passwords, social media credentials, whatever you're doing while you're on the airline's Wi Fi, and that can lead to identity theft. It can lead to if you happen to be doing your banking, which I would highly suggest you don't do any financial transactions while you are using public Wi Fi like the airline's Wi Fi, so they can do this while you're in flight. So there was there was a case in Australia where this happened. So the attacker carried a portable hotspot on board the flight and named it to match the airline's official Wi Fi network, So passengers seeing the fake network with a stronger signal strength connected automatically and then they were taken to a counterfeit login page asking for personal details and so on a flight, the consequences could be amplified. Passengers either give in or share data or lose access to entertainment for hours, and so the success rate for attackers can be quite high.

17:16 Another thing that you can do to help protect yourself with this is make sure you have a virtual private network. So VPN creates an encrypted tunnel between your device and the Internet, making it harder for attackers to intercept your data. Even if you connect to the wrong hotspot, if you connect to the attackers fake or fake Wi Fi their wrong hotspot. If you have a VPN, whatever data you're entering in is going to go through an encrypted tunnel between your device and the Internet. So it doesn't mean that the attackers can't get your information. It just makes it a lot harder for them to try to get it.

17:59 And if there's a people on the flight that are not using a VPN, well then it's going to be easier and they're just going to go and work on their data. So we talked about using strong antivirus and antimoware two factor authentication again multi factor authentication. Make sure you have it on any account that allows it, especially financials. You're going to want to turn off your automatic Wi Fi connections, so in your Wi Fi, if you go into that a lot of times, it'll show that it remembers certain things, and if you do that while you're in the airport or as soon as you get on the plane, it might come up and show and you're going to want to turn off those Wi fis that it remembers. You're going to want to disconnect it whatever it says, because then it won't automatically try to connect to that one if maybe on the previous flight you were connected to one of the attackers of Wi fis.

19:04 And like I said before, limit what you are going to do while you are connected to the airlines Wi Fi, even if you have a VPN, even if you have the strong antivirus anti maour, seriously consider limiting what you are going to do while you are on the plane or sitting in the airport. Keep your devices updated, and make sure you use airplane mode with Wi Fi only. Technically the airlines always tell you you need to switch into into airplane mode, but then you could do Wi Fi only with that, And then watch for phishing pop ups and avoid suspicious links, because if the attacker is able to get in and get your information, they are going to inundate you with phishing emails, with text messages wanting you to click on links, respond to them all in a in an attempt to get more information or to get you to give money to them, and then make sure you don't just that you don't just leave that Wi Fi logged on even if you're not using it.

20:14 Go in and log off of it when you are done. All right, that is it for that. Let's see what's next here. There was an article in the Green Valley News and it came out on October fourth, and our community outreach specialist Brian Watson was quoted in this article. So it's called more victims fall victim to crypto scams, but there's hope. So there was a there was a resident of down in Tucson that lost four hundred and fifty thousand dollars in a cryptocurrency scam, and then a week later, two Green Valley residents all fell also fell victim to crypto scams. So one person reported that they received a text from her banks saying there were issues with her account she needed to transfer the funds be a bitcoin to fix them. She lost twenty six thousand dollars.

21:15 She was seventy seven. She's seventy seven years old. On that same day, another Green Valley resident who was seventy five, reported that they'd transferred ten thousand into bitcoin to a man claiming to be an American soldier who needed the money to get back to the US. She also sent him two thousand and Apple gift cards. So here's some things that Brian said in this article and both in all of these victims that the articles talking about. They went to a cryptocurrency ATM machine. You can find them at gas stations. I've heard there in shopping malls. In all honesty, I'm not exactly sure why they came out, because if you're a legitimate investor in cryptocurrency, you have your own portal and you can invest in it from the comforts of your own home. You don't need to go to a cryptocurrency ATM machine. So if anybody knows of any legitimate reason why somebody would go legitimately to put money into a cryptocurrency ATM machine to invest or to do something else, let me know. But I can only think that it's used to victimize people because they stand there with thousands of dollars in cash putting it into this machine. So, as Brian said, the gift cards were extremely popular with con artists, for a long time, but a lot of these larger companies target Walmart, Home Depot, Amazon.

22:47 They all put signs up to raise awareness of scams. Criminals like to send people to methods of payment they're not familiar with. People know cash, and they know checks, and they know debit cards and credit cards. So criminals like to use wire transfers, gift cards. They still will use gift cards because it's very easy. They just need the numbers on the back, they don't need the actual card. And they use crypto and we have seen such an uptick in cryptocurrens scam victims who have put money into cryptocurrency ATMs. And plus you don't have to deal with anybody. The scammers on the phone, they tell you exactly how to use it. You put the money in. Here's another thing that Brian said regarding these The thing that jumped out at him was these are incredibly intelligent people who handled their own finances and lived on their own. These were not people that were dependent on others or living in like an assisted living or a memory care. They had all of their faculties. They just got fooled and it could happen to all of us and we need to keep this in the back of our minds. It can happen to any of us. Scams have nothing to do with intelligen So if you are one of those people that, whether you think it to yourself or you say it out loud, when somebody says talks about scams, ll that'll never happen to me, you are now more susceptible because you are letting your guard down with the that'll never happen to me, or you know, that'll never

24:20 happen to my loved ones. Then you're going to let your guard down and you're not going to talk to your loved ones about scams. You're not going to check in on them, you know, and make sure everything's okay. They haven't been talking to someone that they've never meant, you know, asking them about their you know, weird emails they're getting or text messages or things like that, or showing them some examples that you may have gotten and showing them how they can figure out if it's the red flags to look for, you know, to tell if it's a scam. So cryptocurrency is digital money that's completely unregulated. It allows people to make payments directly to each other through an online system, but it doesn't require a bank or financial institution to verify transactions. There's a lot of different cryptocurrency platforms. So and Brian, our community outreach specialist, also teaches a class at University of Arizona in the spring semester, and he had a Homeland Security agent speak to his class. And this is what that Homeland Security agent said. If a police officer was looking for a case, they could just park in front of a crypto ATM at a liquor store, gas station and just pull license plates because of the vast majority of the people that use the crypto ATM are either going to be people depositing drug money, illegal money, or victims depositing their hard earned savings. Let's see here. So there is a new

26:01 law that went into effect in I'm going to read about that from the Arizona Corporation Commissions website. It's called the Crypto ATM Fraud Laws Protect Arizona Seniors. That's the article. So the name of the bill that was passed and I was looking for the number of the bill and I don't see it listed here, but it's called the Cryptocurrency KIOSK License Fraud prevention law establishes the following mandates.

26:44 So there are going to be transaction limits, so there's daily limits have been set at two thousand dollars for new customers and ten five hundred dollars for existing customers. Not sure why there's that big of a difference, but that's what the new bill has. In warning messages on screen, warnings must be displayed and customers must must acknowledge them before completing a transaction. Well, in my opinion, that's fine, but when you've got somebody, you've got a victim in an emotional state, especially if they're scared, and the scammers on the other end of the line, they're just going to they're going to do what they need to do to get through the situation. So they think that then their loved one is going to be safe or their money's going to be safe, and they're just going to most likely, they'll most likely just click on that warning to say they acknowledge it. All transactions now require a receipt showing the digital wallet address where the funds were sent.

27:54 That's a great tool because then somebody's been scammed and they've used that machine, they have the receipt. It has the digital wallet's address, and they go and make a report at law enforcement. Law enforcement now has that digital address where the funds were sent, the digital wallets address, And there is also a clause in there about refunds, so it says these cryptocurrency ATM operators must issue full refunds to new customers who were defrauded, provided the victim reports the fraud to law enforcement or the Attorney General and the ATM operator within thirty days. So this one's going to be interesting because at the end of the Green Valley article I was talking to you about just briefly, there was a manager at a vape shop said he thinks those who use the crypto Kiosk and his shop don't even read the warning placed on the machine by the Sheriff's Offers several months ago, and he is unaware of the new law, but said he would be speaking with the shop's owner to see about removing the machine.

29:17 If these machine operator owners are now going to have to refund the money to the scam victim, as long as they're a new customer, they can that they had filed a report on the fraud to either law enforcement or the Attorney General and the ATM operator within thirty days that this store that has this cryptocurrency ATM is now going to have to refund the money as long as all of these other conditions. All of these conditions are meant so that ATM operator could be out a couple thousand dollars, they could be out ten thousand dollars.

30:02 So I'm thinking that, and again, this is pretty new. I want to say. Let me go back to this Green Valley article. I believe it had it. Oh yeah, it went into effects September twenty sixth, so just like ten days ago, it went into effects. So as these owner operators of these machines learn about this new law and all the ramifications, I have a feeling a lot of them are going to get rid of these cryptocurrency ATM machines, which in my opinion is great because that's just cuts off one way that scammers can get their money.

30:47 So I think it's awesome if they can get rid of this. Again, like I said in the beginning, if you know of a valid reason why we need to have these cryptocurrency ATM machines, comment if you're looking, if you're watching this in YouTube, or send me an email and let me know because my thought process, my opinion is it's really used for scam victims to put their hard earned cash in and then they lose it immediately. The last thing we're going to talk about today is, and I'm going to share my screen, there is a scam that we found out about that is targeting veterans.

31:34 And here is the scam. Now this I believe it was the state of Michigan. I believe that some veterans started receiving these postcards. I'm sure veterans all throughout the United States have been receiving this postcard. It's just we saw the article in a paper publication and I believe it was out of Michigan. But they're saying it's the Veteran give Back Program of twenty twenty five, So you may be eligible for up to one hundred and seventy dollars per month back on the Part B Veteran give Back Program. That's up to two thousand and eighty eight dollars per year back to your SOEF security check. Every month, you'll get a credit to your sell security check. Extra benefits include dental vision and hearing, all at no cost.

32:28 Outside of the VA benefits, are administered through Medicare Parts C. Spouses of veterans may qualify if they have Trycare for Life or champ VA. It is preferred to call within five days to help us manage our call volume, and again call today regarding this notification. They have the toll free number, the hours that they're open Eastern Standard time. You know, this is very enticing for somebody, especially you know, most people would be very entire about this because they'd be like, oh, an extra couple thousand dollars a year, who couldn't use that? You know, that's awesome, And without thinking, they just might call the phone number. And then now it's you know, going to be harder to recognize the scam and you know, uh, get out or stop the stop the contact, because they're going to have your phone number and they're going to continue to call you to get you to apply for this extra money which is not really there. So just this is the postcard and this is something that actually people were receiving in the mail. So, as we said before, with the you know, the event in the evolution of all this online stuff, a lot of the scammers went to be want to do everything online and you didn't really see stuff coming in the mail. Well, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It does happen, and you

34:00 have to be careful with the mail as well. So that's the postcard again. I'm sure veterans all over the United States are receiving this. If a veteran has any questions, concerns whatever about their Veterans' benefits, whether it relates to their Social Security check or not, call the VA. Or if you have someone that helps you with your Veterans' benefits that you trust, call that person and talk to them about it before you do anything, because if they're sending this out, they're probably going to change it and send some other scammelered out, or they'll be doing stuff online.

34:46 So just remember to go to your trusted person who you work with on your veterans benefit or call the VA, or go to the VA's website if you have an account on there where you can see your veteran benefits. Always check things out with a verified person, the verified phone number, the verified website. All Right, that is all I have for today. Don't forget. You're gonna want to subscribe so you don't miss an episode of this. Let's talk About Scams show. All of the past episodes can be found on our YouTube and the link is on our homepage on the website. We also have a Let's Talk about Scams dot com website you can go to and it'll show all the podcast platforms where you can find the show. On the homepage of the website, you'll find the other social media links at the bottom. Don't forget you're gonna want to sign up for the emailed newsletter and or the mailed newsletter. Those come out monthly, and the emailed one has a weekly Tuesday tip at nine to fifteen, so it's going to be coming out in about thirty five forty minutes here. Thanks for joining me today and as always, if you have any questions, send me an email if you have also if you have been if you have had a scam experience, whether or not you've fallen victim to the scam, and you

36:18 would like to share that with me and the viewers on the radio show. We are looking for people that would like to share their scam experience, so reach out to me. You can find all the contact information on the website, but it's info at Rosadvocacy dot org and let me know we'd love to have you on the show. All right, let's see next week is the fourteenth. Brian is going to be on next week and you're not going to want to miss his show as he talks about urgency. So see, you'll see Brian next week and I'll be back on the twenty first. Until then, thank you, thank you.

37:01 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.