ONE OF THE most common phone calls coming into the newsroom these days always begins this way:
“I just got a (phone call, letter, e-mail) and I think it’s a scam! I thought you should warn people.”
It seems to be reasonable request. People who work in newsrooms like to think of themselves as defenders of their communities, champions of the little guy and protectors of the weak. There are few more satisfying activities for a reporter or editor than unmasking scoundrels and thwarting their evil schemes.
But in this case, there is a problem: There are too many scams and too many scoundrels. Scams have become epidemic. Anyone who does not get several offers a month of a share in a Nigerian (or South African, Asian or European) fortune is not living in the same world as the rest of us. Anyone with e-mail who does not receive four or five scam e-mails a day may want to check to make sure the computer is still plugged in.
Scams by mail, e-mail and telephone bombard us from every quarter of the sphere. In a global economy, crime becomes global as well.
In such an atmosphere, trying to warn against scams one at a time makes little sense.
What does make sense is reviewing the steps people can take to avoid becoming victims of scams. To avoid infection by germs, you must avoid contact with people who are infected and follow a few simple rules of hygiene. Avoiding being scammed works the same way:
• NEVER give personal information — especially Social Security, credit card and bank account numbers — to any stranger in person, online, in the mail or over the phone. That is true even if the person claims to be from your bank, the police or the Internal Revenue Service.
• NEVER use a credit card to shop online or through the mail with a company or person you do not know.
• NEVER respond to a message that you have won a prize in a contest or a lottery that you cannot remember entering.
• NEVER send money or credit information as a condition for receiving such a prize.
• NEVER open e-mail or attachments in e-mail when you are not sure of the source of the message. E-mail and its attachments can be used to plant software that can collect all of the personal information in your computer and send it to a thief.
• On that topic, ALWAYS keep your anti-virus and firewall software up to date and ALWAYS keep it turned on.
• NEVER give money to a charity you are not familiar with. That especially applies to charities with names that sound familiar — fake charities often choose names that sound like names of real charities.
That is the best warning we can give.