TORRINGTON – The use of social media to perpetrate fraud against the elderly is the focus of a national campaign launched last month by the AARP.
Anne Gardetto, a spokesman for the Goshen County AARP group said they do not have immediate plans to join the awareness campaign, but probably will later this fall.
“Right now we are busy with other local community projects, but we will probably look at this later this fall,” Gardetto said. “As of today, we haven’t had contact from the state or national office on the scam issue.”
Local law enforcement offices have not received calls about social media
scam contacts.
The national alert was issued last month to media outlets due to the proliferation of scams and fraud schemes on social media. The AARP Fraud Watch Network was launched to educate Americans about social media hazards and provide information about how they can
protect themselves.
“Scammers have been using email and telephone calls to target unsuspecting victims for years. Now, with today’s boom in social media use, the con artists are just as likely to use Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms to execute their insidious scams to steal people’s money and identities,” said AARP Fraud Watch Network Ambassador Frank Abagnale. According to the Pew Research Center, approximately 70 percent of Americans regularly use social media.
Abagnale provides the following tips to avoid identity theft via social media:
• Never post personal information, including your Social Security number – not even the last four digits -- birthday, place of birth, home address, phone numbers, or personal account information.
• Avoid posting a front-facing picture of your full face on social media sites. A con artist can copy the image and use it to create a photo ID that can be used to steal your identity.
• Set the privacy options for each of your social media accounts to restrict your information so it can only be viewed by people you select. Check your privacy settings regularly.
• Don’t log in to your social media accounts via a public wireless network, where scammers can lurk. A 2016 survey by the AARP Fraud Watch Network found that more than 70 percent of the respondents have accessed their email, Facebook and other social media accounts via free public Wi-Fi.
