Nowadays, with so much communication via phone or email, it is hard to know what's real and what isn't. A while back, for example, I got an email, purportedly from a cousin, saying she was stranded in England without money as she had been robbed... At first I didn't know what to think - so I called her home, several thousand miles away. She was at home - not in England. Her email account had been hacked and emails requesting money had been sent to everyone in her email address book.
Since these incidents I have become very cynical and assume almost everything is a scam. (Which is why, for example, when someone comes to my door canvassing for a cause I want to support, I write a check made out to that charity rather than give cash.) I view it as giving responsibly.
Why am I saying all this? Not to create a sense of paranoia - simply to pass on a a free online resource I just discovered, a government publication called: "The Little Black Book of Scams: Your Guide to Protection Against Fraud." I printed up a copy for myself.
It only has 19 pages, so it is well worth printing up a copy - although if I were to do it again, I wouldn't print up the cover page! Too much black ink wasted!
It's a useful resource wherever you live as scams are international. Emails and phone calls come to us from around the world. (In fact, while I was typing this, the phone rang. Someone with an Indian accent said he was calling to tell us that our computer had a virus and he could fix it online... and I could pay for it by giving him my credit card information!)
I know it's a scam... I usually just hang up - though I'm tempted to say: I have no computer... What are you talking about?
Or maybe something like: A computer? What's a computer?!!
(Would the calls stop then?!) But it bothers me to lie... even though I know the person on the other end of the line is lying to me!
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