Every day we receive emails from sites that look like our bank or seem to be from an organization we have trusted. How can you know what is real and what is fake? It will be increasingly difficult in the months to come to figure out who and what to trust. The Russians have not given up on us, nor have the many hackers out there. So here a few of my hints. I hope you will add yours.
- For emails that look legitimate, there are a number of ways to evaluate them. My favorite is to click on the sender’s name. The email may have your bank’s logo on it, but the sender is an individual with an ” .edu ” at the end of their name. That’s a pretty good giveaway. Delete it or send it to spam.
- Another way to detect fake emails is to look for misspellings or weird English use. That’s usually a good sign the email did not come from the source you thought it did.
- Always remember that Medicare, your Bank, Social Security, your insurance company, are not going to ask you for money or personal information by email or on the phone. They would most likely send you a snail mail letter instead. Be very wary before you respond.
- What if you are searching for something on Google or Safari? How do you find out if that website is the real thing or maybe an Ad? Most search engines now put their “promoted” sites first on the list. More than once, I thought I was looking up Medicare and got diverted to a paid site that was not Medicare at all. Look at the URL. Does it have a “.gov” at the end? — “https://www.medicare.gov”? If it doesn’t, you are being sent to another site. In fact, websites with “https” instead of “http” are usually more reliable and certainly more secure. There are many websites that have the word “Medicare” in them but the suffix is “.org” not “.gov”.
- During our upcoming political season, which has already started unfortunately, there will be websites that are fake with requests for donations to sites that are not real. Do NOT donate online to any site you do not recognize and that you cannot verify by looking at their URL (does it match their name?). If it is an email requesting a donation, look at the sender name. If it doesn’t match the website name, delete it and send to spam. If you have never received an email from that organization, it is important to check it out perhaps by calling them to see if they really exist at that number.
- About Facebook — my own point of view is that I do not click on ads or leave my own FB page to look at another page, even if a Friend or family member suggests I really should read that article! The family member may have been hacked or misled, and I simply do not trust FB to control these sites. But that’s just my opinion. Just know that Hackers are going to focus on FB and try to get us all to read stuff that is patently fake. We have to be vigilant.
- As fo rumor emails that circulate virally, when you get one, go to https://www.factcheck.org or https://www.snopes.com/fact-check to see if the information is accurate. You may be surprised how clever some of these rumor emails can be as they to try to persuade us of their accuracy. If you received that email from an unwitting friend and it was not factual, consider letting them know it’s fake and send them the URL from FactCheck or Snopes to prove it.
I’m afraid that the bottom line is that we all have to be very skeptical these days about calls, websites, emails– we are under attack by a number of different entities, and we have to be careful not to fall for their sales pitches. If you have questions, feel free to contact us. We can help you look up the source and find out if what you have read or heard is the real thing. In the meantime, this is a great resource on “Senior Scams”.