Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Phishing Scams and How to Spot Them. Phishing is a type of online scam that targets consumers by sending them an e-mail that appears to be from a well-known source – an internet service provider, a bank, or a mortgage company, for example. It asks the consumer to provide personal identifying information. Then a scammer uses the information to ...
Debt Relief Service and Credit Repair Scams. Debt relief service scams target consumers with significant credit card debt by falsely promising to negotiate with their creditors to settle or otherwise reduce consumers' repayment obligations. These operations often charge cash-strapped consumers a large up-front fee, but then fail to help them ...
The Federal Trade Commission is warning the public that scammers are pretending to be affiliated with the FTC to steal consumers’ hard-earned money. The FTC will never tell consumers to move their money to “protect” it. The FTC will never send consumers to a Bitcoin ATM, tell them to go buy gold bars, or demand they withdraw cash and take ...
Phishing. A form of fraud in which a scam artist sends an email (or places a phone call) purporting to be from the recipient's bank, internet service provider, or other trusted source and asking for personal information such as credit card or bank account numbers, passwords, or Social Security numbers.
Main Menu Mega. We enforce federal competition and consumer protection laws that prevent anticompetitive, deceptive, and unfair business practices. Find legal resources and guidance to understand your business responsibilities and comply with the law. We work to advance government policies that protect consumers and promote competition.
Report it. Forward phishing emails to reportphishing@apwg.org (an address used by the Anti-Phishing Working Group, which includes ISPs, security vendors, financial institutions, and law enforcement agencies). Let the company or person that was impersonated know about the phishing scheme. And report it to the FTC at FTC.gov/Complaint.
Romance scammers’ favorite lies exposed. Romance scammers tell all sorts of lies to steal your heart and money, and reports to the FTC show those lies are working. Last year’s romance scam numbers looked a lot like 2021 all over again, and it’s not a pretty picture. In 2022, nearly 70,000 people reported a romance scam, and reported ...
The FTC’s interactive dashboards for refund data provide a state-by-state breakdown of FTC refunds. In 2022, FTC actions led to more than $462 million in refunds to consumers across the country, but recently the United States Supreme Court ruled the FTC lacks authority under Section 13(b) to seek monetary relief in federal court going forward.
Let’s start with the most-impersonated companies. According to 2023 reports, Best Buy’s Geek Squad, Amazon, and PayPal top that list. But reported losses tell a different story: losses were highest when scammers impersonated Microsoft and Publishers Clearing House. [3] The scammers impersonating these businesses work in very different ways.
Whatever the story, reports show that scammers don’t settle for just any card – they tell people the specific gift card brands to buy. In the first nine months of 2021, over twice as much money was reported lost on Target gift cards than any other brand. Google Play gift cards were next, followed by Apple, eBay, and Walmart cards.