Walked in the door this morning and was handed a floor "call". This came in as a fax from somewhere... A Hand written note with e-mail headers rather than fax headers.
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Dear Realtor,
My name is Martha Johnson.
I have clients in your area.
May I refer these clients to you?
Martha Johnson
Please call me!
818-444-7315 ext. 8029
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A quick google search of the phone number comes up with scam after scam report from people. One tech tip that I can give is if you want to know about something or someone, google their phone number. Find out who you're calling before making the call, especially on a scam like this.
Whenever I get e-mails from "my bank", which invariably over the years has not been even my bank, but some unknown to me credit union or national bank that I don't bank I check the link before clicking. I've even gone so far as to call people.
I've contacted a couple non-profits in the Southeast, I'm in the Northwest, and let them know that their server has been compromised, and they should get someone to clean their server and secure it. Often times, someone hacks into their servers, and small companies have no idea that it's happened until they get contacted by the online security from the bank. This often times will take a few days, and by that time, someone has invariably entered their information, and a scammer somewhere has made some money.
ALWAYS check the link. ALWAYS check the link. ALWAYS CHECK THE LINK. Does it go to the bank website, or does it go to some other website? Is it even the bank website, or is it another domain name that is similar? Somewhere Federal Credit Union whose website will be sfcu.org and the link may take you to sfcu.za. Check the domain. I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir, but think about what you're doing before you click online. If you get an e-mail from someone saying something is wrong, doubt that it's real.
1) Type in your banks url and go to their website directly.
2) Call the bank instead.
3) If you do visit the fake website, check to see that it's really the correct url. If the address bar is not the real website, report it!
You can report websites in newer browsers under the 'Help' menu usually. "Report web forgery" and that will mark the website as a fake. It will then help alert other people to the problem.
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