Post by ck4829 on Nov 4, 2017 15:21:24 GMT
The Wemstroms: This is the era of scams and fake news
The other morning our cell phone dinged. The text message said, “Pls contact me about a claim,” along with an email.
No name, no explanation, obviously a scam. The scammer just wanted our email.
This is the era of scams and fake news. With email, cell phones, social media, Facebook and Google, it’s difficult to know what to believe.
We’ve probably all gotten calls from the IRS, threatening to arrest us if we don’t call back. And text messages saying we’ve won a cruise. We’ve received emails, supposedly from our internet provider, telling us they were updating and we’d better follow a link immediately or our service would be discontinued. Of course, they wanted our password. Some companies get into computers and interrupt what you’re doing to say there’s a virus and to call a certain number right away.
We’ve even gotten emails with the name of a friend in the “from” column. Suspiciously, the email was not our friend’s. And the message said only, “I thought you’d be interested in this,” along with a link. Clicking on the link would probably have given our computer a virus.
And President Trump is correct: fake news abounds, although his idea of fake seems to differ from ours. Facebook claims to be monitoring this to an extent, although we still get posts, both liberal and conservative, with misleading headlines. And some people copy Facebook pages and send messages to the friends of the person whose profile and cover photo are copied.
...
Another email was supposedly a Meet the Press segment from September 7, 2008, where Obama allegedly said he wanted to “disarm America” to satisfy Muslim countries and that he and Michelle “disrespected” the flag.
It was from a satirical news article. Obama wasn’t even on Meet the Press on that date.
How to combat all this? For scams, remember that the IRS would send a letter and not a robo-call. A legitimate source would know your name and explain the specific problem. For Facebook, make your friends list available to “only me.”
Use your head. People don’t win cruises for nothing. And no matter how much you hate Obama, he wouldn’t get on TV and say he disrespects the flag. Visit fact-check sites. If you don’t like Snopes, try PolitiFact or FactCheck.org. Or look up other legitimate sources.
“Confirmation bias” is what allows us to believe what we would like to be true. Guard against it.
www.journalstandard.com/opinion/20171102/wemstroms-this-is-era-of-scams-and-fake-news
The other morning our cell phone dinged. The text message said, “Pls contact me about a claim,” along with an email.
No name, no explanation, obviously a scam. The scammer just wanted our email.
This is the era of scams and fake news. With email, cell phones, social media, Facebook and Google, it’s difficult to know what to believe.
We’ve probably all gotten calls from the IRS, threatening to arrest us if we don’t call back. And text messages saying we’ve won a cruise. We’ve received emails, supposedly from our internet provider, telling us they were updating and we’d better follow a link immediately or our service would be discontinued. Of course, they wanted our password. Some companies get into computers and interrupt what you’re doing to say there’s a virus and to call a certain number right away.
We’ve even gotten emails with the name of a friend in the “from” column. Suspiciously, the email was not our friend’s. And the message said only, “I thought you’d be interested in this,” along with a link. Clicking on the link would probably have given our computer a virus.
And President Trump is correct: fake news abounds, although his idea of fake seems to differ from ours. Facebook claims to be monitoring this to an extent, although we still get posts, both liberal and conservative, with misleading headlines. And some people copy Facebook pages and send messages to the friends of the person whose profile and cover photo are copied.
...
Another email was supposedly a Meet the Press segment from September 7, 2008, where Obama allegedly said he wanted to “disarm America” to satisfy Muslim countries and that he and Michelle “disrespected” the flag.
It was from a satirical news article. Obama wasn’t even on Meet the Press on that date.
How to combat all this? For scams, remember that the IRS would send a letter and not a robo-call. A legitimate source would know your name and explain the specific problem. For Facebook, make your friends list available to “only me.”
Use your head. People don’t win cruises for nothing. And no matter how much you hate Obama, he wouldn’t get on TV and say he disrespects the flag. Visit fact-check sites. If you don’t like Snopes, try PolitiFact or FactCheck.org. Or look up other legitimate sources.
“Confirmation bias” is what allows us to believe what we would like to be true. Guard against it.
www.journalstandard.com/opinion/20171102/wemstroms-this-is-era-of-scams-and-fake-news