Better Beware!

Everyone should be wearing a face mask in public these days, but not all of them work. Here’s a summary of test results on various kinds of masks, and a simple way to test any mask.

The scammers are working faster than the health authorities — fake messages and phone calls from phony “contact tracers” are trying to steal your identity…and maybe your money, too. Here’s how to recognized the crooks.

Google recently discovered 25 nasty apps that had been in their Play Store quite awhile and downloaded 2 million times. Find out if you got one of these! And here’s a wonderful resource from the Federal Trade Commission to help you identify all the current Covid-19 con games.

Phone scammers who threaten you are now insisting you don’t hang up until you send the money; people have been getting mysterious packets of seeds in the mail, and phone apps from Presidential campaigns have big differences. Three things to watch out for!

Digital Assistants can be anywhere, are getting to be everywhere, and can be turned on when nobody realizes it. Ordinary language mistaken for a “wake word” can mean your privacy has just disappeared. Here’s what to watch out for. [English Majors: I dangled that participle deliberately. So there.]

An outfit called the “Freedom To Breathe Agency” is distributing official-looking but totally bogus cards that claim the bearer is exempt from facemask requirements. Don’t accept them, don’t use them, and beware of anyone who does!

Here are a couple of the latest things to beware of — parents take note! — and a couple of heartening stories about scammers who ran out of luck.

The Federal Trade Commission has just issued a report on the effect of COVID-19 on scams and swindles over the last six months. The fraudsters switched their targets and methods very quickly, to concentrate on the most lucrative con jobs in the new conditions of the pandemic. For instance – we’re all staying home a lot, and are easy to …

If you, or someone you know, has filed for unemployment insurance – watch out. There have been massive unemployment fraud schemes hitting states literally from coast to coast. The state of Washington has admitted to paying out hundreds of millions of dollars in fake claims. When claim filings in Washington shot up from six thousand a week to eight hundred …

Stalkerware is a program – a very sophisticated and perfectly legal program – that you can install on your cellphone. Or…and this is the point…somebody else can install on your cellphone. It’s a program that lets another person know who you’re talking to, see your text messages, know your exact location at any given moment – in fact, see whatever …