Two Wants to Know is warning you
about fake invoices that can
sometimes look pretty legit.
Take a look at this text and toe
of our producers saying $468 is going
to be deducted from your card for your
Amazon Prime annual subscriptio.
Well, some long strange numbers
and instructions to call another
long strange number follow.
You know, at first glance this may look real,
but if you look real close,
you can see the red flags.
For example, The Who is sending that e-mail,
the address at the top has a
bunch of letters,
or sending that text has a bunch of letters.
Linked to a Gmail account.
Now, why would Amazon text
you from a Gmail account?
Well, they wouldn't.
Invoice scams happen every day.
The Better Business Bureau sees
a whole lot of them.
Amazon, of course,
is not the only company that it's targeted.
There's also many ones using Pa,
the geek squads.
We're going to talk about that today.
Lachelle Yates IT from the
Better Business Bureau is here.
She's going to be taking
your questions about scams.
Just text
336-379-5775. You can get your
question answered by her in real time.
But your question is? Is anonym.
OK, so let's start with these invoice scams.
Lachelle, typically.
Let's talk about how they look.
Yes, So right now people are
reporting invoice scams to BBB m
Tracker and here's how they wor.
These are appearing to come
from Geek Squad and PayPal,
and they look very real.
That's what people are saying.
And it says that you're going te
charged hundreds of dollars andt
this is an automatic renewing account.
And the but then they give you
a phone number and APDF and now
of course you're going to call
this phone number because you
never authorized this charge.
And so you're going to call and
a helpful customer service agent
is going to answer and pretend o
assist you with the cancellatio.
Now for the Geek Squad version,
they may offer you a refund and
then ask you to confirm your bak
account information so that they
can cancel the subscription.
Well, you've just given them.
Your bank account information.
And then they're going to use tt
to gain access to your account d
withdraw money without your con.
For the PayPal version.
They're going to ask you your username
and your password for your acco,
or they're going to send you toa
fake PayPal look alike website e
you're going to enter that information
and then they're going to use tt
to gain access to your account.
So stop takeaways.
One, ignore these emails from Gk
Squad and from PayPal,
but if you are intrigued,
don't call the phone number,
But don't.
And don't click on the PDF's.
Because what's going to happen s
you're going to download malware onto
your computer or onto your devi,
and then they're going to use tt
to track keywords and keystroked
passwords and all of that kinds of things.
And the other thing is that youd
to be aware of is that this isn't just
necessarily a danger for you at home.
This can also be a danger at wo.
So talk about this tomorrow with your
coworkers when you get into the office.
OK. And so that is like a big dl
because they scammers don't mind
scamming the workplace or you personally.
It can be for 5 bucks.
It can be for 500 bucks.
There's like no limit to what they'll do.
And sometimes you might think, ,
well, I want so and so to look at it,
to see if it's real,
you're right and and you know,
and that's that is something that is.
Perfectly legitimate.
My dad's always showing me stuf,
which I think is great.
And I think it's great also
to show your coworkers,
show your other friends,
and one it educates them in case
they didn't know that it was a ,
that these scams exist.
But it's also good to have anotr
set of eyes to look at things.
And my my dad's been getting some things that
appear to be scams but are actually real.
And here's the scary thing is tt
when you're looking at these,
you really have to be careful,
and we're going over ones that .
Not to be real,
but we're looking at it minutel.
Who is it coming from?
Just like you said,
the scam that was from Amazon,
it was coming from a Gmail acco.
We're looking at these,
they're coming from the real company.
So that's how we knew it was re.
But we're dissecting each one of these,
going through step by step to to
determine if it's real or if it's fake.
All
right, well, we just got a text question
that says how do I report scams to the BBB?
That is super easy.
So we have BBB Scam Tracker.
You just go to bbb.org/scam Tracker and right
there it says do you want to report a scam?
And it walks you through the process.
And they're also a BBB Scam tra.
You can look to see other
scams that have been reported.
So if you think that something is a scam,
just like if you got this invoice and
you're wondering is this real or is it fake,
you could go to BBB Scam
Tracker and put in, you know.
PayPal or Geek Squad and see
if it comes up as a scam.
But we really do encourage you
to go ahead and report it.
If you do come across something like this
because you're warning other pe,
which is always very helpful.
Yeah, the next followup question
that we got in, this one's kind
of a little bit more difficult.
Can the BBB help me get my money back?
I wish we could. Believe me,
if we had the power we would.
But alert your bank. Let them k.
Rare occasion they can help you,
but at least they can shut downr
account and keep anybody from fm
them accessing more of your mon.
But that's why it's really impot
to to know what the warning signs are
of this kind of fraud so that ye
not in the position of trying tt
your money back in the 1st place. Yeah,
it is really rough trying to get your
money reimbursed when some scammer has it.