Here’s a way to screw up your holidays:  Get looted from an internet scam.  Time for eight tips to avoid internet thieves:

1. Guard your personal information. Never give personal information over the phone, text or email to someone you don’t know.
2. Do business only with those you know and trust. This is good advice, but these days, you additionally have to be aware of crooks posing as a legitimate business you know and trust.
3. Double check. We just talked about why.  The bad guys will try to pose like good guys.  Check who that email came from in the from line and compare it to known legitimate emails.  Have doubts about somebody calling you claiming to be from a trusted source?  Get their name and number, internet search the number and if legitimate you can call them back.
4. Monitor accounts. Look for suspicious credit card transactions or other activity you don’t recognize.
5. Watch what you click on. Beware email attachments from sources unfamiliar to you.
6. Keep your antivirus software current and working.
7. Be on guard for any contact you didn’t initiate, be it a phone call, text message or email. Reach out directly in a separate email, text or phone call to your trusted sources to confirm the validity of this unsolicited contact.
8. Beware these scams:
   1. Romance Scams – Someone online is interested in you but has every excuse about why they can’t meet in person, then they ask for money.
   2. Overpayment Scams – Someone is going to overpay you for some item you’re selling or renting and you’re supposed to refund them the difference. Only your refund will be legitimate funds.
   3. Phishing Scams – Scamsters email you from a seemingly legitimate company asking you to update your personal information or otherwise provide sensitive personal information like passwords, credit card numbers or even a social security number. Often, these scams have poor grammar or don’t look quite right in any number of ways.  When in doubt, separately contact your existing trusted contacts at the company to confirm the legitimacy of this phisherman.
   4. Unexpected prize. All you need to do to claim it is to pay a shipping charge or other fee.  Now the scammer has your money and probably your credit card info too.
   5. Ransomware Scam. If you make the mistake of clicking on something you shouldn’t have, the result is that a scammer could encrypt your data locking you out from your own files.  In exchange for a ransom, the scammer is supposed to restore your data, but this often doesn’t happen.  Some scammers skip the encryption part and just claim that they’ve copied or stolen your data.  These you can just ignore.
   6. Tech Support Scam. Once again, if you innocently import malware by clicking something you shouldn’t, you may get pop up ads from tech support companies warning you that you have a serious computer problem that the tech support scammer wants to fix.

The best solution is to maintain a certain degree of cynicism.  Assume any unfamiliar contacts are from someone trying to steal from you!

photo by pexels.com

Christmas can fill you with a warm feeling, but hopefully not from your Christmas tree being on fire!  So let’s review a few tips to keep you safe this year.

1. Think safe lights. Get rid of those energy hogging and hot burning incandescent lights and get some cool operating LED lights.
2. Use products where they were intended. Packages are marked for indoor or outdoor use.  Use the products the way there were intended and you won’t burn your building down.
3. Be careful with candles. Candles and kids don’t mix well but plenty of adults have had tragic accidents with candles.  Why are we hung up on this 19^th century technology?  Thankfully, there are “flameless” electric candles that are very convincing and you don’t get the soot and wax mess.  Do any internet search and you’ll find dozens of alternatives.
4. Bring any electric issues to your landlord’s attention immediately. This shouldn’t wait until Christmas but should apply year-round.  Sparking, bulbs blowing, switches that require multiple attempts before they work, none of this is normal.  When in doubt, contact your landlord.
5. No cord pinching. Cords running through doors, windows or patio doors are subject to getting pinched causing the cords to fail and a fire to start.
6. Don’t overload your circuits. Don’t plug too many items into the same outlets.  Don’t employ outlet adaptors designed to multiple the capacity of an outlet.

This would be a no!

Have a Merry and safe Christmas!

Seattle recently approved an ordinance that mostly prohibits landlords from screening tenants based upon their criminal records. This is the illogical extension of recent HUD (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) guidance instructing landlords to consider only actual convictions, not merely arrests, and to consider convictions on a case by case basis.

The HUD guidance is reasonable, but in the Seattle ordinance, a landlord may be able to deny housing to those listed on a sex offender registry, but only if the landlord can show a legitimate business reason for doing so. The standard of a “legitimate business reason,” is a wide-open invitation to litigation. In the meantime, the rest of the Seattle tenant population is immune from being denied housing based upon their criminal history.

Violations of this new law will be painful for landlords, up to $11,000 for a first offense. Continue reading →

Somehow, it seems appropriate to talk about security measures on Halloween. After all, it’s trick or treat season. So welcome back to our second installment of 10 Security Measures to Protect Your Home.

6. Buy a timer – leave the light on. Remember those old Motel 6 advertisements featuring Tom Bodett that ended with, “… and we’ll leave the light on for you?” It’s a good idea to leave a light plugged into one of those hardware store timers and they only cost about $5.

7. Get to know the neighbors at your Racine apartment – have them keep watch when you’re gone. If they can be trusted. Otherwise, they’re one of those strangers that you shouldn’t share your schedule with that we talked about last time. Continue reading →

More often than not, the words criminal mastermind are an oxymoron. Consider the case of a young man in White Plains New York that tried holding up a bank using a zucchini. The good news is that it is not hard to defeat these thugs and keep them from breaking in to your place. So beware strangers wielding dangerous vegetables and keep these first five of the 10 Security Measures in mind. Be sure to check back next time for tips 6-10.

1. Lock your deadbolt. This is the simplest and most secure security measure you can have. It presents a physical barrier that is difficult to defeat. Sure, an intruder can still kick the door in, but that makes a lot of noise. More likely, he’ll just move on to an easier target. And you should lock your deadbolt even when you’re home. Continue reading →