Scareware is in the air!

It’s that time again! Everyone’s getting into the Halloween Trick or Treat spirit–including scammers using Fear to trick you to steal your personal information.

My Human has been getting a lot of calls and want’s me to let you know what tricks you should watch out for.

Big money in identity theft (sadly).

Identity theft has become such a lucrative international business, the bad guys can buy sophisticated equipment and professional call centers with operators that don’t sound like they are from a different country.

As the holidays-and tax season approaches, these bad guys target people in the U.S. over 50 years old, and the Baby Boomers.  They use “scarewords” to make people to respond without thinking. Things like “your social security number has been cancelled”, “warrant”, “charges”, “IRS audit”, “must respond now to prevent…”

Using a little common sense (to save your cents).

If you think about it and apply some common sense, what they say in those calls doesn’t make any real sense at all.

Personal finance cat columnist Michelle Singletary wrote an excellent article explaining these scams in the Washington Post that you can read in this link here.

Pass this information on to grandparents that might be a target. Halloween is for giving out candy (or sardines) to monsters, not information!

~ The Computer Cat

If you get a call about your computer, IT’S A SCAM !

UPDATE: In addition to the scam of the bad guys calling you, there is a new type of “scareware” that’s appeared. It pops-up a message on your screen saying your computer has been infected and with a phone number for you to call them so they can “fix” your infected computer–for several hundred dollars. The rest of their scam is just like my article here. Watch out for these dirty “rats”!