On This Episode…

Craig is on with Jack Heath as they discussed the email and phone scams that are happening right now, as well as the new hoax circulating, the Momo challenge.

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TRANSCRIPT

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.

Airing date: 03/04/2019

Telephone Scammers

Craig Peterson 0:00
Good morning, everybody. Monday morning. I was up early this morning on the air with Jack Heath, as I am pretty much every Monday and he wanted to talk a little bit about some of the scams that are going on because, man, they are hitting him and everybody else. The statistics are just crazy on these phone scams. You know, you pay for your mobile phone. And then they did try and scam you men paying for the bad guys. So here we go.

Jack Heath 0:29
Alright, joining us now on the Auto Fair listener lines. Thank you for the indulgence and patience. Our Tech Talk guy, Craig Peterson. And Craig, so many scams right now. So many emails, so many phone calls on the warranty department about a car you no longer own. So many people calling you about your Chase account even if you don’t have one, wanting your credit information. It’s impossible to keep up with this stuff.

Craig  0:51
Crazy eh? Good morning Jack. I got an email last week and I ended up writing an article put it up on my website because I got an email from Apple support supposedly. It is across the board. My father got caught up in one of these tech support scams where he was having some problems with his computer. And he got a phone call saying it looked like his computer might have been hacked. And they need to get on and have a look and he fell for it. It’s really bad. So I went through and spend some time last week writing this whole thing up talking about what the red flags are, if it’s legitimate, what you should do. The FBI has been telling us that there is about a $12 billion dollar industry out there right now trying to scam businesses into wiring money. And when I say 12 billion I mean they have $12 billion cash out of businesses by doing this.

Jack 1:53
Well Justin had a relative pass away where the other day you got a nice letter Justin, a Tweet?

Justin 1:57
A Twitter direct message. My uncle Husson Isaac, apparently had passed away in a tsunami in Indonesia and he left me $3.6 million. Craig. All I do is give my personal information and they will give me half of it.

Craig 2:12
Wow, that’s really good. Half of the money. Wow, you didn’t even know it was there. Another big one Jack did I got for one of our listeners. And Justin, you might have heard of this too. But in one of our live listeners and yours too Jack, he works at one of our local school districts. And after the kids come back from holidays here. He’s going to be talking about this, but the Momo challenge has raised its ugly head again. Talking about scams. This is a hoax. Have you heard about this? The Momo challenge?

Jack 2:43
Yes.

Justin 2:44
Oh, yeah.

Craig 2:45
And yeah, it’s it’s kind of a big deal. There are no reports, by the way from any police department that I could find, or in any articles I could find. There are no reports that anyone’s actually been harmed as a result of the phenomena. But it’s again another scam and it’s the scammers are out there last year course was the year ransomware by the bad guys where they will take over your computer, yeah. And will hold it ransom, your information ransom. It’s still a very big deal. But this year, they’re changing their angles because of the popularity of some of these cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, and they’re now taking over your computer to spread scams, but also to use your computer to mind for Bitcoin and it’s going to cost you a lot of money because ultimately you have to pay the electric bill for all of their money they’re doing but these scams are difficult. The FCC is trying to do some things FCC is doing some things. Our State Attorney General’s office is doing things and there’s also reporting available you can report online to the FBI in order to report to them the scams.

Jack 4:01
It’s not just your computer anymore and of course our phones or computers but these scammers are calling people directly pretending to be the IRS, pretending to be your your bank, pretending to be some relative, and pretending to be the warranty department of a car you owned you know 10 years ago and the bottom line is just don’t answer the call hang up you can call them back and you can tell it’s a scam. And don’t open an email and click anything and don’t give information because most of your credit or legitimate organizations don’t call you and ask for this information.

Craig 4:39
Yeah, absolutely. And they don’t send the types of emails that we’ve been seeing. And the current reports that are out there by the way otter that this year 50% of all mobile calls will be scams so that means half of the time that call is going to be a scam. Massachusetts has seen a 500% growth in spam and fraud calls as of the end of last year we’re seeing something similar so yeah Be careful there is software you can use I’ve mentioned Hiya before. H-I-Y-A on your show Jack. I use that to help block scam calls but it’s gotten. So bad basically I block every call that comes to me that not from someone I already know. All of the rest of them end up going to voicemail.

Jack 5:28
All right, Craig Peterson good stuff. Craig Peterson with an O-N.com. Thank you on this Monday morning.

Craig 5:34
Thanks. Take care.

Craig 5:35
Hey, if you are in my current group coaching session, or if you run it last Thursday, I mentioned that I was releasing this week for all of the people who signed up for the course of very detailed installation instructions on Windows 10, what to do, what options to take. And we even included in that what hardware to get and what’s the differences between the different hardware, why you should get this or that what’s a workstation, the different types of processors and everything very, very in depth. So have a look for that. It’s in your insider account. That video, the transcription, my slides, you know, everything per usual. So I’ll have a lookout for that and I hope everybody has a great week. I’ll be back tomorrow with Mr. Jim Polito.