Scams

Beware of Fake Websites Impersonating FinCEN for Beneficial Ownership Information Report Due

by

The FinCEN Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) Report filing deadline is approaching fast. It’s important to be aware of scammers trying to take advantage of this by creating fake websites that look like the official FinCEN website. What is the BOI Report and What is the Deadline? The Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) Report is a government … Read more

Don’t Believe Anything Equifax Says in the Breach of 1/2 the U.S. Population

by

First, Let’s start with the Banklady’s take on the Reasons why the Equifax data breach is a total disaster:

  1. Security breach on their end.
  2. They knew a month ago and waited this long to give the details to the people impacted (that’s us).
  3. It looks like some of their shady executives were dumping stock in the meantime.
  4. Their website to “help” looks like it was designed by the slowest kid in fourth grade. People are questioning whether to even trust that site.
  5. Once you enter your information on the makeshift site they made to check to see if you have been on of the people affected it doesn’t even tell you if were impacted for sure.
  6. The site won’t let you enroll for any help and they won’t send a reminder when that’s ready.

Equifax as we have told you about in the past is one of the nation’s three main credit reporting agencies. They announced a “cybersecurity incident” that could potentially impact roughly 143 million U.S. consumers. They knew about it for weeks before they revealed it to the general population. The news also comes just months after a breach occurred at an Equifax subsidiary earlier this year, exposing W-2 and payroll data to criminals.

Equifax data breach exposes personal info of millions of Americans

According to Equifax, hackers exploited a security vulnerability in a U.S.-based application to gain access to consumers’ personal files. After discovering the breach on July 29 of this year, the company says it “acted immediately to stop the intrusion” and “promptly engaged a leading, independent cybersecurity firm that has been conducting a comprehensive forensic review to determine the scope of the intrusion, including the specific data impacted.”

Read more

Facebook, Instagram & Social Media Money Scams To Avoid

by

facebooklottoscamWe have all at some point at least learned once not to just click on any email when it says it’s from Yahoo or a password reset to a site. At least we hope you check every link carefully that comes in your email as such. Now that most of our time has turned to Social media so have the hackers and scams from deep within the dark world wide web.

Cyber criminals can get to you easy on social media especially on Facebook. With more than a billion users, Facebook has become an easy way for scammers to rip off as many people as possible at once in a variety of different ways. These hackers and scammers are getting smarter and more innovative posing as the people running contests or freebie sites to find a way for you to reveal your personal information or send them money.

You need to know how to spot some big scams that are making the rounds and how to protect yourself. Here’s a few Facebook and social media scams to watch out for:

If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. That same rule of thumb applies to Facebook and every other social media site, email chain etc. Any promise of a outrageous return on a small investment is probably a scam! If someone is messaging you on Facebook or Instagram claiming to be the owner of a contest or freebie site then contact the page you follow and see if that is the actual person. Most likely it’s a fraud. Just recently a friend who owns a freebie site told me about how a friend of theirs was messaged from a person on Instagram using the logo of the site on their page making it believable. They had claimed they were Paula Abdul trying to get that person to send in information and money. They would not give their phone number at first and when they did it was a Google Voice number that could not be traced easily. People actually fall for this and think they can send money to this person online who seems trustable then they never get anything back in return.

Read more

“Chase Away Debt” Relief Scams

by

I received a disturbing email today from Jill West today with an address of Alvera@aybyra.com. I first thought it was from Chase because the logo was so similar but then I scrolled down the page and the MSNBC logo was on there to make it look reputable. The email just looks plain legit if you … Read more