Hello again! I hope you had a great week!
As you probably know, Facebook is a virtual playground for scammers who are experts at finding new ways to separate you from your money.
While there is always a scam or two making the rounds, this is apparently an especially busy month for the scammers.
Today I’m going to tell you about several current Facebook scams that you need to be on the lookout for:
1 – The “Your computer has a virus!” scam – This scam seems to come and go with the seasons, and it’s back with a vengeance this month.
In a nutshell, a scammer claiming to be from either Microsoft or Apple calls you up and tells you that your computer has a virus, and they can get rid of it for you in exchange for some cash. But it’s all a huge scam! This post has all the details.
2 – The “Win a free car contest!” scam – This is one of the most tempting scams of all. After all, who wouldn’t want to win a brand new car?
Unfortunately, the only winners in this contest are the scammers. They trick you into “entering” their fake contests, then they leverage your “Likes”, “Shares” and “Comments” to scam other Facebook users out of their cash.
There are indeed legitimate car giveaways that take place on Facebook every now and then, but most Facebook-based “contests” are scams. This post explains how to tell the difference between the real contests and the fake ones.
3 – The “You need to update your drivers!” scam – This scam is similar to the “Your computer has a virus!” scam mentioned above, but with a twist.
Instead of the scammer calling you on the phone, you receive a legit-looking pop-up notification telling you that your hardware drivers are dangerously out of date and you need to pay the scammer a fee to update them for you.
This post has all the details about this scam as well as a few tips for avoiding it.
4 – The “iTunes has overcharged you!” scam – This scam makes its way onto your computer in the form of a phishing email.
With this scam you receive an official-looking email that appears to have been sent by the folks at Apple. The message says that you were overcharged by Apple’s iTunes service and you need to click a link in the email to log in to your iTunes account and claim your refund.
Again, the entire email is a scam from start to finish. You can read more about the details in this post.
Well, that’s it for this week. If you have a tech question that you would like for me to answer, click here and send it in!
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Congrats to Jamie C. of Oxnard, California for winning the awesome TP-LINK Archer C7 AC1750 Dual Band Wireless AC Gigabit Router in July’s Tech Gear Giveaway!
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I hope you found this edition of the newsletter useful and interesting. If so, I hope you’ll consider passing it on to any of your friends and associates who might enjoy reading it as well.
Thanks a bunch,
Rick Rouse
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