What are common scams I should be aware of?

- So Grace, you know,

and I'm asking both to protect all of us

but also I have a strange
fascination of, of exotic scams.

What, what are the types
of scams that you've seen?

How, how elaborate have,
have these things become?

- Yeah, so unfortunately the attackers

are getting more creative.

Now, the good news is that

most major, you know,
email platforms for example

are automatically blocking
all kinds of spam that,

or scams and spam that you
never see on a regular basis.

For example, during the Covid Pandemic,

Google blocked 18 million
Covid impersonation

emails per day.

And that is something that never made it

to people's inboxes.

- What is a Covid impersonation email?

- So unfortunately, one
thing to look out for

with these scams is folks impersonating

what you might think
of as a trusted source.

So maybe a hospital or health organization

reaching out with Covid information,

kind of trying to beat people
in with something timely.

So we do really recommend that folks

go directly to the trusted
website of that organization

as opposed to clicking into a link

that may look a little bit suspicious

or may not be something
they were expected to hear.

Another flag is if a
email or a call or a text

is really trying to rush you

into providing personal information,

such as your bank account information,

your password, or otherwise.

So we, we were seeing trends of attempts

to kind of reach out and say, help now or

please send money here.

We, we are also seeing
impersonation attempts

around special offers.

So, you know, if it
looks too good to be true

it probably is, if you're
being offered free items

that are high monetary value,

but you're being asked
to immediately, you know,

put your credit card information down

and that's definitely another
red flag to look out for.

- Wow. It, it is a dangerous world

but I'm glad there are
folks like you who are,

are helping keep dragging.

It feels like it's a
never ending arms race

so we have to stay vigilant.

- Definitely. I think
that's our biggest tip

is to be proactive and definitely

take a bit before clicking
on something suspicious

and, and, and verify, you know

if there's a, you receive something

you think it looks like
it's from someone you know

or something you're familiar with,

go ahead and find another way to confirm

that that's actually the case.

- And always check the link
you're about to click on

and before you type in a password,

think three times are my takeaways.

And two step verification.

- Absolutely.

- Thanks so much, Grace,
that was really useful.

- Thank you Sal.