{"id":203,"date":"2006-08-21T18:48:00","date_gmt":"2006-08-22T02:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/?p=203"},"modified":"2012-10-04T20:49:25","modified_gmt":"2012-10-05T03:49:25","slug":"scam-alert-travel-agents-direct","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/?p=203","title":{"rendered":"Scam alert: \"Travel Agents Direct\""},"content":{"rendered":"

KOMO TV (the Seattle ABC affiliate) did a story on July 6 about a company scamming people<\/a> over the phone.<\/p>\n

The wild thing is that today I've gotten a call at work from this company twice<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 The phone number on caller-id showed as 727-683-1119 (a Florida area code).\u00a0 The tricky thing is that they start out by saying they've got some free rewards.\u00a0 Then they asked me to confirm my home address, and they correctly tell me my home address.\u00a0 But then they<\/strong><\/em> ask me<\/strong><\/em> to tell them what my bank name is and ask for my checking account number.<\/p>\n

Fortunately something felt wrong so I never gave them that information.\u00a0 When I asked why the person calling me why they needed it, they basically said that in order to get my \"free rewards\", they needed that info.<\/p>\n

Based on the KOMO story and also a thread on Scam.com<\/a> (found via Google), it looks like if you give them your banking information, they send you coupons, but directly charge your checking account for these \"free\" coupons.\u00a0 Unlike a credit card charge, because they do it directly to your checking account, it can be a lot harder to get your money back.<\/p>\n

So be careful.\u00a0 If anybody ever asks you to \"confirm\" any account numbers, the caller should be able read them to you and you say \"yes\" or \"no\".\u00a0 If they insist, ask them to give you the the first 4 or 5 digits, and you will finish for them.\u00a0 Even then, be wary — if they really are from your bank (or wherever), they shouldn't need this kind of information from you.\u00a0 If they claim that it's important, hang up and then call your bank (or whatever) directly — if it is<\/strong><\/em> legitimate, you will be able to resolve things by calling your bank.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KOMO TV (the Seattle ABC affiliate) did a story on July 6 about a company scamming people over the phone. The wild thing is that today I've gotten a call at work from this company twice.\u00a0 The phone number on caller-id showed as 727-683-1119 (a Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-risk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=203"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":965,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions\/965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.netjeff.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}