By Mike Lavelle
As the paper is getting ready for print, I heard on the news that Tucson Electric Power (TEP) is reporting people receiving phony TEP calls. It seems over 100 people, in one day, reported scammers calling them, reporting to be from TEP. According to TEP, 5-10 calls are usual, and this was a dramatic upswing in scam calls.
I have noticed a dramatic and unfortunate upswing in telemarketing and scam calls coming to my phone the past few months. Honestly, it has increased to the point that I (mostly) do not answer the phone from unknown callers. Interestingly, the scammers have responded to people doing this by spoofing calls from your same 3-digit prefix, thus leading you to think it is a call from your neighbor. I have also noticed that now there are names with similar numbers, causing me to at least wonder if I somehow should answer, because I might know this person, or that they know of me.
On page 25 of our issue this month, Myriam Cruz from the Better Business Bureau reports that scams and cons (of a political nature) are on the increase leading to the 2020 elections, (of course they are).
One should also be careful now about calling organizations, as I recently learned. I had to call Amazon and searched for their phone number online. Up came a page that looked very much like Amazon’s. I mentioned the reason for my call (a purchased item came with a wrong part), and the would-be scammer indicated that my account was blocked due to lots of suspicious activity. The scammer tried to have me enter commands in my Windows “run” window, but knowing about computers, I knew this was not something Amazon would do, so I hung up and realized I somehow called a spoofed number.
There are two things I can think of that would help ward off these scam attempts. First, have a list of organizations with numbers that you know are real. It seems that searching online for phone numbers for Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Microsoft, Apple, and such, can lead to bogus numbers and sites. Second, one way to help maintain account security is to set up what is known as two-level authentication. Basically, organizations, when contacted, will send you a text, message, or call, asking you to validate that it is you. You can also use an authenticator app (Google these things for more information or call the organizations and they will guide you to set them up). Also, the Southern Arizona BBB is available at (520) 888-5353, to assist as they can.
