Me.
Yeah, it happens all the
time into every one of us.
A phone rings unknown number pops up.
You answer. The caller offers to give
you what forgive your student loan debt.
Give you a cure to COVID or maybe extend
that car warranty that you don't even have.
Yeah, those unknown callers
are most likely scammers.
Lashell Yates from the Better
Business Bureau joins us to talk about
scams and robo calls and also best
practices that you can take to protect
yourself when it comes to business.
So let's get your text questions going.
The number to text her.
Your question is 336-379-5775 and remember,
this is a text only, so please don't call.
It is a text only.
Alright,
so lachelle let's first and foremost
start with this thing called afterpay
and afterpay is something that a lot
of folks will see online that will
possibly make whatever they just
bought online a little more affordable.
But there's always some kind of catch.
Yes, so you often may
hear them called buy now.
Pay later programs their loans
lenders if they break things up
into you know four easy payments
and you're going to see it on
everything from $4 mascara to
something as expensive as a peleton
and you know they're really for
people who may not have credit
may not want to get a credit card,
or, you know,
may not be able to get credit.
Alright, so we're taking a look
at it now so people can see like
this is when you're checking out.
It'll say change payment method and
it talks about PayPal and then it's
got the after pay that kind of thing.
So if you do choose after pay
and it's a trial or you're paying
in monthly installments and you
decide you don't like the product,
then what happens?
Well, so this is what people need to
understand about afterpay and all of
these other buy now pay later programs
is that they don't have the same kind
of protections that a credit card has,
and so if you have a problem with the
product, let's say you don't like it,
it's defective or you never get it.
You just don't have those same protections.
And what happens is these lenders because
these really are loans the lenders make.
You have to reach out to the merchant
and try to get a credit for the product.
Or get a refund and then you have to
actually stay on top of the merchant to
make them process the payment and then
tell the lender that the payments been
processed and all the while you're still
having to make payments on the loan.
So the big danger is one you still
have to make that payment while you're
waiting for all of this to happen.
And if you're dealing with a scam website,
you know that none of that.
Is ever going to happen and you know
during the pandemic there were a
lot of scam websites that popped up.
So this is a real danger, right?
And so it's
one of those things where again,
we always say if you're going
to buy something online,
buy it with a credit card,
not a debit card, but a credit card.
That's the easiest way
to contest something if
something goes wrong. Yeah, absolutely,
because you can dispute that charge and
you're not having to pay that charge on
your credit card while it's in dispute,
and you know you can tell you
can tell your credit card issue,
or, hey, I never got.
The product I sent the product back
and so I should have gotten a refund.
It was a defective product.
There's that whole process that's already
been set up by the federal government
that really protects you as the consumer.
You know, these buy now pay later
programs is so new none of the consumer
protection laws have really caught up yet.
So just keep that in mind.
It's very tantalizing.
You know you don't have to go through
credit to get that loan to pay for
something expensive or cheap like mascara,
but just realized.
What the dangers are?
OK,
let's go and talk about fake QR
codes so I didn't even know that
fake QR codes existed until you
and I started talking about it.
Not that it surprises me that they
figured out how to do something like that.
So is the danger simply just
scanning the QR code or is it
what comes afterwards? It's both.
So sometimes you can scan one of these
fake QR codes and it will force the
blade download an app onto your phone,
or it could take you to a
phishing website and you're gonna
run into these fake QR codes.
It could be on a menu from
your favorite takeout place,
and one of these scammers could have
slept a fake QR code over the QR code
from your restaurant with QR codes.
These days are everywhere,
then it's because they're so
convenient they're on takeout menus.
There are emails. They're on text messages.
There's one example of somebody who
got a letter that was supposedly
from a government student aid
organization had a QR code in that
make it easy to apply for this
student aid from the government.
Scan the QR code.
Went to a very official looking
government looking website.
She put in her information and
unfortunately it turned out to be a scam.
So it's one of those things
where if they have the
QR code you maybe need to
double check with them to say.
Do you have a QR code
'cause they may say yeah we
do or no we don't. Yeah exactly.
I mean the other thing is you just
treat a QR code like you treat any
link from somebody that you don't know.
What do we do with links we
don't know who they're from?
We don't click on them.
And in this day and age.
Unfortunately, even if you do get a
QR code from somebody that you know,
call them first and say, hey,
did you really send me this QR code?
The other thing, and I alluded to this is.
You know, if you have picked up
that restaurant menu takeout menu
and it's got a QR code on there,
just kind of fiddle with it and make
sure that there's not a sticker stuck over.
It's because scammers know
that they can do that now,
so that's also a clue.
But you know the other thing that you
can do in QR codes are very convenient.
It's quick and easy,
you just scan it with your phone.
It takes you right to where you want to go.
You can download some QR code apps
from antivirus companies and these apps
they know if it's a phishing website.
Don't know if it's gonna be a force
app download and they also know
about some other dangerous links,
so if you want to use the QR code,
download one of those.
Alright,
we're getting a whole
bunch of questions in the text
Q we're going to be right back.
We're going to be answering
your questions coming up next.