Insects and Scumbags

Remember that old saying 'coming/crawling out of the woodwork'?

Supposedly this pertains to insects coming out of the wooden parts of a house. In time it was used for anything unexpected or hidden, usually something unpleasant.

Today it is a good description for scammers. The scam may come in email, snail mail or the telephone. Even TV ads may just be a scam.  All of those car waranty ads come to mind, as well as ads for 'real health insurance'.

Just recently someone called my siter-in-law and tried to get her banking information by telling her there was a problem with her account.  Fortunately she is no dummy and the scammer got nothing from her and hung up when she tried to get him to tell her what bank he was calling about.

There is just about nothing these evil doers won't try to scam folks out of their money.  I hate to insult the insects, but today it's the scumbags 'coming out of the woodwork'!

Watch out for Automatic Renewals and Those Renewal Notices

Recently someone told me about having a hard time canceling their subscription for a virus scanner. The user had decided not to renew this program and use another scanner.

However the company had charged the user's credit card using an automatic renewal that the user had no idea was in place. Possibly in the fine print of the EULA or somewhere in an obscure place there was a notice to the effect that the automatic renewal would happen, but that is doubtful.

While this may be of benefit for some users who might forget to renew the subscription, it seems to me it is an underhanded way to boost the revenue for the company. My answer for this problem is to buy a program from a local retailer or if that is not an option, use a credit card that offers a 'one time use'. Then if the company tries to charge the credit card, the charge will not go through.

This is not the only place where 'automatic renewals' can happen. Some periodicals will do the same thing.

Prevention magazine tried to use the same tactic with me. Since I was bitterly disapponted with this magazine (more ads than content) I certainly did not intend to renew the subscription.  When I called to complain, I was told I had signed up for the automatic renewal.  I knew better!

I also received an alternative health newsletter that tried the same tactic. When I called to see why, I got the same response. "You signed up for automtic renewal". I immediately canceled that newsletter and made the decision not to get any more snail mail newsletters.

Last year I decided to not renew any of my many magazine subscriptions.  When they all contain more ads than content I just decided I didn't need them any more.  I also got rather peeved when they kept sending me renewal notices a year in advance! I recently read about an elderly gentleman in his 90's that had a subscription paid up for 30 years! He just kept returning that renewal notice.

It seems that the scammers have gone main stream.  How sad is that.

Martha

Don't give that site your password!

Did you join one of the 'social networks'? If you did join one, did you give the site the login and password to your email account?

Why?

Did you give the site that information because it asked for it? If you don't know by now that is not a very good idea, then I will tell you why you need to keep your email private.

You need to know what happens when you give that 'social network' your login and password. They are going to 'spam' everyone in your address book by sending them an 'invitation to join this social network. This invitation will be sent to any business address, your boss (that could be very embarrassing!), every contact you have in your address book. This may include the owner/moderators for Yahoo Groups/other lists and can get you removed from the group/list! Owner/moderators really don't want to join your social network and don't appreciate the spam/invitation.

I suspect you probably didn't know that was going to happen, but in fact it did.

Now comes another question. What will that site do with all those email addresses it just added to their email address database? You do know spammers pay big bucks for email addresses, don't you?

Now just in case you didn't know all this and think you may want your friends to join you on that social site, most of them have an option for you to just add the email addresses manually. You might want to ask them first though, just in case they don't want their email address to be added to a potential spammers' list.

Think about it, giving someone access to your email is just not a good idea. Who knows what could happen if someone in charge of that database turns rogue and decides to 'have some fun' with your email account!