Fraud Alerts

This Thanksgiving, tens of millions of Americans are expected to hit the road to visit friends and family for the holidays. Scammers will be thankful, too, since all of this travel will make it easier to convince potential victims that they missed paying a toll while on their way to Grandma’s house.

For veterans, social media might be one of the easiest ways to keep in touch with friends from past duty stations and loved ones back home. But what’s shared on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok can also make it easier for scammers to connect with you. Here’s a Veterans Day reminder of how scams may show up on social media to help you and your fellow veterans spot and avoid these scams.

Planning a trip? Need to book a flight, hotel, or something else for travel? Know that some companies tack on extra charges they make hard for you to see or bury in the fine print — hoping you won’t notice until it’s too late. Here’s how it happens.

During open enrollment for the Health Insurance Marketplace (Nov. 1 – Jan. 15), you might feel like you’re seeing ads for health insurance plans everywhere you look and getting similar pitches over the phone. These ads and pitches can sometimes be misleading: they might promise things like comprehensive health insurance but actually offer limited benefits. Or be for medical discount cards and not health insurance at all. Other ads might look like they’re from the government or well-known insurance companies — but they’re really from impersonators trying to gain your trust.

Scammers impersonate all kinds of organizations, including reputable charities. And these impersonators sometimes make you believe that you won a charity-sponsored sweepstakes because you’ve donated to that charity. So, if you get a call about a sweepstakes contest you’ve supposedly won from someone who says they’re with a charity you support, how can you tell if the prize is real or a scam?

Here’s the latest twist on FTC impersonators: someone claiming to be an FTC official (who’s really a scammer) calls to say a phone was registered under your name and number and is being used to commit scams in another country. The “FTC official” even reads off their badge ID (it’s a fake badge). If you don’t cooperate, they threaten to deactivate your phone number. Sounds scary? That’s (unfortunately) the point.

With open enrollment starting soon, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with policy options. Scammers use this opportunity to take advantage of information overload in order to rip off unsuspecting consumers. Especially for individuals new to Medicare, it can be difficult to sort out legitimate offers from frauds.

Kids face a lot of challenges online: from cyberbullying and scams to digitally altered deepfakes, like nudify apps that create fake nude photos and videos of real people. Even if you’ve had conversations with your child about online safety and sensitive topics like deepfakes, you probably know parents who are concerned about these topics, too. If so, consider using the FTC resources below to help you learn more and share with fellow parents.

It seems like every day, a major weather emergency or natural disaster happens somewhere in the world. To help people affected by disasters like hurricanes, recent flooding in Nepal and Tibet, or recent earthquakes in Venezuela, Japan, and Colombia, you might want to donate money to help. Scammers know that and hope to steal money intended for disaster relief. Here’s what to know.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is warning the public that it has become aware of fake advertisements for a fictional “Veterans Savings Program.” The criminals promise extra VA benefits or payments while hoping to steal victims’ sensitive information.