Metro Creative

Scammers are criminals who will say and do anything to separate you from your money. A growing category of scams, many skirting the edges of legality, are cleverly named “expert advice” websites luring customers into endless credit-card payments for what amounts to nothing in return. In many cases, the customer contacts the advice service to ask a question and is told they will merely be charged a dollar or so to get an answer.

The reality turns out to be far different. Believing you have agreed to a one-time transaction for a dollar or two, you have actually been enrolled in a scheme that siphons a bit of money off your credit card every month, forever.

Many seniors fall for a similar con, the “tech support” scam. You receive a text or email saying that there is a problem with your device and it may be infected with a virus, or worse. In good faith, you contact the “support” people and are signed up for a monthly charge to protect your device. In reality, you have been conned into giving a scammer your credit card number, whereupon you will be charged for eternity for, in reality, nothing.

A common trap used in the tech support scams is a pop-up message that starts flashing, saying there is a problem with your computer. You can’t get rid of the message no matter what you do. In desperation, you click the pop-up and are delivered into the hands of a fraudster. If you ever get pop-up messages like these, press your device’s power button for 10 seconds and reboot your computer again. Whatever you do, NEVER click on the pop-up message.

Millions of seniors have fallen for tech-support scams, so many that the FBI has a webpage dedicated to this kind of fraud. Some of these scammers will con you into giving them enough information to let them take control of your computer from anywhere in the world. When this happens, your computer may be loaded with malicious software, or worse.

Read more about this kind of scam on the FBI’s website by keying in “tech support scams.” The FBI says legitimate companies will never call or offer tech support out of the blue.

Stay aware of scammer tricks by reading scam updates from AARP and the FBI’s Elder Fraud page. If you are online, you need to be on your toes. Knowing how scams work is your best defense.

In the meantime, the trees are budding in the Valley, and we are slowly but surely headed for warmer days. Amazingly, it’s already been warm enough to hatch out our pesky summertime nemesis, the fruit fly. Daffodils and tulips are finally popping up here and there. Northeast Ohio may be a beast in the winter, but nothing beats our area for a beautiful spring!

Dave Long of Poland, a Youngstown State University graduate, is a retired public affairs officer with U.S. Customs and Border Protection who later worked as an Elder Scam Prevention Outreach specialist in Rochester, N.Y., before moving back to the Mahoning Valley. He gives a monthly lecture on scams targeting seniors and how to avoid them on the fourth Thursday of each month at 1 p.m. at the Poland Township Government Center.