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. You should seek
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the services of competent professionals before applying or trying any
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suggested ideas. The information contained in this podcast is intended
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for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for
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individual professional legal advice. The podcast information was carefully compiled
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from vetted sources and references. However, Rose Resources outreach to
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safeguard the elderly cannot guarantee that you will not fall
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victim to a scam. Let's talk about scams. It's the
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must listen show for anyone who wants to protect themselves
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and their loved ones from scams. Every Tuesday am Pacific
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time on K four HD Radio, Joyce Petrowski, founder of Rose,
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and her guests will provide valuable insights and practical tips
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on how to recognize and protect yourself from scams. And
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now here is your host, Joyce Petrowski.
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Hi, everyone, it's good to be back.
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Joyce Petrowski, founder of Rose Resources Outreach to safeguard the elderly.
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You can find more information on our website at Roseadvocacy
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dot org. Scroll down to the bottom of the homepage
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and you can sign up for our mailed and or
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emailed newsletters that we send out monthly. And with the
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emailed newsletters, every Tuesday morning at nine point fifteen, you're
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going to get a Tuesday tip in your email inbox.
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It's going to have one tip. It's going to have
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a tip about a specific area, something you already are
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familiar with. Then you can just bypass it. But the
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part of the reason why we do it not only
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to get tips out, but we do it because it's
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a it's a gentle reminder to always be on the
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lookout for scams, and getting that every week is going
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to remind you every week and then at some you
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know some of them you're not going to be familiar
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with on these tips, and so you're going to learn
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some new information that you can incorporate into your daily life.
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So a couple of weeks ago, when the last time
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I was on, we talked about how to tell if
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a website was a good website or not. And since then,
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I've come across another website that I just wanted to
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show you really quickly, so I'm going to share my
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screen here, I mean just a minute, so you all
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should see this this and you know they can. You
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can look here the biggest data, biggest database of scam.
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They give you a lot of information. They have some
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other educational information on scan trends, scam alerts. But what
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you can do up here where it says search a website.
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I just put in Amazon dot Com. Everybody's familiar with it.
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But just for.
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Searching, it's going to verify that I'm a human here.
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This should only take a second. There we go verification successful.
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I Uh, everybody knows it's a good website. Trust score
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one hundred out of one hundred. The nice thing about
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it is you can look at community reviews and you
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can look at what does Amazon dot Com have? Why
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does they have an average to good trust score? And
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it's going to tell you detailed analysis if you want,
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click here, it's going to have positive highlights, negative highlights.
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But you can go up here to this trust score
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where it says what is this and you can click
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on that and it's going to give you.
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It's going to give you.
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Information about how they do their domain trust rating to
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get to their trust scores positive indicators. Scroll down, they're
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going to tell you some negative indicators. Just a bunch
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of different informations. So it's another way for you to
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another avenue for you to check out a website if
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you're not familiar with it.
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But the.
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Last week Brian Watson was here, sorry about that, and
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he talked about it is okay to hang up on scammers,
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and that is definitely a good thing to do. If
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you do happen to answer the phone and you realize
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that it's a scammer, it's not who they say they are.
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Don't worry about being rude. I know we all, you know,
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those of us that are older, we've been taught that
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it's rude to hang up on people.
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Don't worry about it. It's not rude.
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They're being rude to begin with, trying to trick you
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and exploit your emotions to take your money. So hang
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up on them. If you do engage and realize, you
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know that it is and then you realize that it's
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a scammer.
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And I've heard.
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From people, multiple people you know, over the years, but
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recently I've started hearing this again and so I started
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checking it out.
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Is a lot of people will say.
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We only answer, you know, the calls from people we know,
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which is a good thing to do. But then it'll
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be they'll say that, well, scammers don't leave voicemails. Well,
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I've been hearing from quite a few people that scammers
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are leaving voicemails, and especially with the advent of artificial
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intelligence and scammers really embracing the artificial intelligence. We've talked
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about that before, with like the chat GBT, you know
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that can that can take out the bad grammar. So
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when you're reading that email, that text message, you get
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something in the mail, you know, whatever it is, and
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you're like, oh, wow, you know this is unexpected. I
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didn't know this. Oh but the grammar's really good. There's
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no bad grammar, so maybe this is legit. Well, chat
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GBT helps them figure out how to write in good grammar.
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And then there's the you know, the the deep fakes
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with the videos. You know, we've talked about that. We're
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like on romance scams, they would never want to come
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on camera before because they didn't look anything like what
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their fake profile that they purporting to be in any
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pictures they were sending you, they didn't look like that,
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so they didn't want to come on camera. They always
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had an excuse. Well, now through the artificial intelligence, they
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can make that video look like whoever it is, you know,
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look like the person in the pictures that they're sending
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you or that's on their fake profile.
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But yet they're still engaging with you. It looks real.
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They're talking to you, you know, they're behind it, talking
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and saying everything. So, but there's also the voice cloning,
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and they only need I've heard from some people ten seconds.
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I've heard from others fifteen to twenty seconds.
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I think it's.
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Somewhere in there, but it's a short amount of a
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recording of someone's voice is all they need to then
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manipulate that voice to say whatever the scammer wants that
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voice to say. And so we equated that to like
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the grandparents scams, where when they first started they had
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no clue if you had grandkids. Well, then through a
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lot of online information and a lot of hacks and
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breaches of companies and getting that information on your personal information,
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they're able to figure out, you know, your grandkid's names.
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Well then it was like, well, yeah, they had the name,
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but the voice didn't sound like my grandkids, so I
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knew it was a scam. Well, now with this voice cloning,
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that voice can sound exactly like your grandchild. But they're
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also doing it to make it sound like the voice
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is coming from a reputable company. Could be a company
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that you've actually, you know.
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Done bit business with.
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It could be one of your utility companies, it could
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be a bank, and they're making it all the more believable.
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And when you don't answer the phone and it goes
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to voicemail, well then they're leaving these voicemails that sound
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very believable and very reputable that they are in fact
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these companies. There was an article that I found from
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the beginning of the year from Fox five in New York.
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It was published on January twenty eighth, twenty twenty five.
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AI voicemail scams on the rise. What you need to know,
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and that's exactly what they're talking about, is how they've
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begun using incredibly realistic sounding AI generated voices and voicemails
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to conduct the schemes like offering fake loan approvals or
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tax forgiveness or saying that you haven't paid your bill
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or things like that.
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And the FBI estimates that.
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About twelve billion dollars is lost annually to cyber crimes
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or cyber scams, I should say, and that this new
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method of this AI generated voicemails is only adding in
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adding to the problem. And it goes on to say,
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unlike traditional phone scams that often had telltale signs like
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accents or poor grammar, AI has enabled to has enabled
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scammers to produce polished, convincing messages that are harder to
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identify as fake.
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You know, so how do they get how do they
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get people's voices?
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Well, if you think about it, one way is if
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your voice so on your voicemail greeting, if you have
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customized it and used your voice on the greed on
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your voicemail greeting, well they can get it from that.
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So if you have used your voice there, you might
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want to seriously consider going and changing that to the
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default message that just would normally, you know, be a
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computer voice that whatever your carrier has. And I think
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there's I don't know if the carrier has these things
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or if it's different apps that you get where you
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can make them sound like, you know, they have.
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An accent and stuff like that.
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But anyways, just seriously consider not using your voice for
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that voicemail greeting. And then, you know, there's a lot
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of if you're on social media and you do a video,
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you know your voice is on that video. You know,
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there's just a lot of different ways if you are
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you could be maybe you're doing videos for your company
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and everything's legit and stuff, and those videos are on
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the company's website, you know, the they can find those
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on the company's website and stuff.
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So you just want to be.
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Careful wherever your voice is out there. But I did,
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Actually I'm going to share. I'm going to pull up
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a screenshot here that I took. I was on LinkedIn
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the other day and this gentleman here, Thomas Lap. He's
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a daily money money man helping you manage household finances.
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One of his clients received a voicemail and it was
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a scammer. And he goes on here to say that
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it says, Hi, Comcast Exfinity calling. Due to continued silence,
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we have removed your fifty percent discount and are preparing
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one thousand dollars account penalty. This charge will be locked
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into your next bill if you don't call back on
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the number showing on your caller ID right now. And
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we've talked about emotions before how scams exploit your emotions.
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If you remember from a number of weeks back in
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the beginning of the show, we talked about the anatomy
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of a scam where they had the contact and so
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here they contacted via phone, no one answered, so they
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left a voicemail, and the second part was creating that
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compelling reason to act, which is where your emotions come
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into play. And so based on what they're saying in
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this message, and you can scro you can look down
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here to what Thomas has said, urgency right call back now.
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Scammers don't want you to think about what you're being
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told to do. And you know that is exactly correct.
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Is it's urgent. Everything with scammers is urgent. They want
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you to call back right now because they know if
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they can keep the longer they keep you in this
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emotional state, the more apt they are to get what
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they want, which is your money. The longer time you
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have thinking about this and not engaging with that scammer,
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you're more apt to be go into your rational state
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of mind and realize, Okay, well I don't have to
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call back now.
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Let me think about this.
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Let me, you know, if I am a Comcast Exfinity customer,
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let me pull out one of my previous statements from
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Comcast Exfinity and let me call the customer service phone
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number on that statement, or go to the website that
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is listed on that statement and I can check things
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out there with my account or talk to a customer
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service person there and check things out and find out
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if this is accurate or not. If you're not a
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Comcast Infinity customer, well then you know right off the bat,
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you know that this was that this was a scam.
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But there's there's more emotions that they're exploiting here. Fear right,
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they've put this account penalty in there, We've removed.
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Your fifty percent discount.
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Now, who wouldn't want a fifty percent discount on services
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or products? I mean that's a substantial discount. We all
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love to save money and get discounts where we can. Well,
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adding that thousand dollars account penalty is going to instill fear.
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It's a power, Like Thomas said here, it's a powerful emotion.
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Humans want to.
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Avoid fear, and a lot of us, older adults, you know,
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we've been we we pay our bills on time. We
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don't like to we don't like to have outstanding items
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out there. We want to keep things current and we
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want to keep things in good standing. So we would
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be more apt to want to engage with this and