Don’t get hooked

here are a couple things you should remember next time you get a message on your phone or your inbox beeps: No good deed goes unpunished; and if it’s too good to be true, then it probably is.

Say someone you know sends you an email or a text and asks you for a favor. Maybe it’s even a voice mail. As you’re getting ready to help, you might ask yourself: “I wonder if they’re OK?”

What you should really be asking is: “I wonder if that’s really them?”

Or maybe you get a notice that you’ve won the lottery and all you need to do to claim the prize is send a processing fee. Sorry, those numbers just don’t add up.

While technology has brought people closer together, it’s also brought us closer to scammers, some who do their deceptive deeds from a safe distance halfway around the world, casting their bait far and wide as they phish for information.

By Cody Cutter Sauk Valley Media FRAUD cont’d to page 6

As the e-mails pour in and the ads keep popping up, Whether to delete or not delete is the question, but finding the answer isn’t always that simple. While there are countless different kinds of online scams out there, they’re usually rooted in money. You’ve got some and the scammers want it, and they don’t care what they have to do to get it, even pretending to be a friend or a loved one.

If someone is asking for money or gift cards, it’s a scam, Whiteside County Senior Center Director Susie Welch said.

“I’ve heard of a Publisher’s Clearinghouse scam where they would get older gentlemen to go get money orders,” Welch said. “Also, Facebook scams where someone clones you and asks for gift cards — that one where you think it’s your friend, and it really isn’t.”

As the most commonly used social media communication platform for seniors, Facebook attracts no small number of scammers. Sometimes posts ask for information from you that the scammer can then use to access your accounts. Or maybe the post is offering you something for next to nothing — a prize, for example, and all they need is your bank account number so you can claim it. Just remember: If the reward offered is something much greater than the simple task requested of you, there’s no real reward at all.

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire — Posts such as these for free cartons of Marlboro cigarettes occasionally pop up on Facebook in hopes that people will take advantage the tempting offer. Note some red flags: 1) the word “carton” is misspelled in the description; and 2) the link to the page does not mention Marlboro or its parent company, Altria, by name.

Another favorite ploy of scammers: promises of big discounts with online coupons for big ticket items, such as cartons of cigarettes or a large shipment of baby diapers. The general rule of thumb is this: Put yourself in the company’s shoes; if there’s potential for major profit loss with such a deal, then the offer isn’t coming from that product’s company.

Deb Connor, director of the Carroll County Senior Services organization in Mount Carroll, estimates that about 85 percent of elderly people do not have computers. The remaining 15 percent that do likely are more limited in computer knowledge than a person in their 40s or 50s, and especially more than a young adult.