Scam Round Up: QR Codes, Satellite TV, and unsubscribe scams
By Greg Collier
Once again, we’ve come across a few scams that may not warrant an entire blog post to themselves, but we felt deserved your attention.
We’ve all seen QR Codes, even though we may not know what their called. They’re the codes that retailers and other companies use that can be scanned by your phone. In some instances, they give you more information on a product or service. However, the Better Business Bureau is warning consumers that scammers are using QR Codes for devious purposes. These malicious QR Codes are even worse than links used in phishing emails, as the QR codes can not only lead you to malicious websites or inject malware into your device, they can also open up many payment apps. It’s recommended that you only scan QR Codes from entities you trust.
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If you subscribe to a satellite TV service like DISH, or DirecTV, you may want to be wary of any phone calls offering upgrades. If someone calls you claiming to be from your provider and asking for your address and PIN, hang up. Scammers will try to get you to pay for non-existent upgrades while saying it’s a better deal to pay now over the phone than having a technician show up. These providers will never ask you for personal information over the phone, and giving a scammer your PIN could lead to your payments being directed to them rather than your provider.
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Lastly, we have a scam that wants you to unsubscribe from a service or product, sort of. In this scam, the scammers call their victims and tell them that they must unsubscribe from a free trial or their credit card will be charged. If the victim says that they never signed up for any free trial, the scammers will say that someone else must have signed them up, and they still need to cancel. The scammers will then lead victims to a phony website where they can supposedly unsubscribe from the service they never signed up for in the first place. Of course, these websites are designed to not only steal your information, but can inject malware on to your device as well. If you receive one of these calls, it’s recommended that you contact your credit card company to make sure there are no subscription services on your account that you didn’t sign up for personally.
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And again, as we like to say, just because a scam isn’t happening in your area, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look out for it.
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