Taken from the Santa Fe New Mexican~

Re­cu­per­at­ing at home af­ter a fall down a flight of stairs and a sub­se­quent head in­jury, a friend was work­ing on his com­puter when he re­ceived a call from “Win­dows Com­puter Ser­vices.” The man, who asked that his name not be pub­lished, had re­tired from his job as an elec­tri­cian af­ter be­ing di­ag­nosed with Me­niere’s dis­ease, a chronic con­di­tion of the in­ner ear that causes ver­tigo.
Coin­ci­den­tally, he said, when he re­ceived the call, he was hav­ing a lit­tle trou­ble with his com­puter, so he pro­vided the caller with his credit card num­ber and pur­chased a $139 ser­vice agree­ment.
He also com­plied with the caller’s in­struc­tions and down­loaded soft­ware that al­lowed the caller to take con­trol of his ma­chine. But later, he re­al­ized that the caller had not fixed the prob­lem he was hav­ing with his com­puter. He then found an­other com­puter re­pair ser­vice on­line and paid an ad­di­tional $139.
By the time his wife re­turned home from work, he had spent $417.
“I was con­fused and stupid,” said the man, who had be­come the vic­tim of cy­ber­crim­i­nals. “I just hope my story helps some­one.”
Mean­while, his wife called his credit card com­pany, and work­ers there were able to can­cel the charges.
On Thurs­day, the Fed­eral Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion re­leased new rules to give phone car­ri­ers more au­thor­ity to take ag­gres­sive ac­tion against these types of scams, but the rules will not go into ef­fect im­me­di­ately.
The FCC al­ready re­quires tele­mar­keters to make spe­cific dis­clo­sures and sets lim­its on the times tele­mar­keters may call and pro­hibits call­ers from con­tact­ing phone num­bers listed on a Na­tional Do Not Call Registry. But the agency still records more than 325,000 com­plaints each month about un­wanted tele­mar­ket­ing calls from tele­phone cus­tomers listed on the reg­istry.
Cy­ber­crim­i­nals have be­come in­creas­ingly shrewd, us­ing robo-call­ing soft­ware and spoofed num­bers that ap­pear to be le­git­i­mate gov­ern­ment or lo­cal num­bers, ac­cord­ing to the FCC. Thou­sands of peo­ple lose their money and per­sonal in­for­ma­tion to tele­phone scams each year.
Cur­rent tele­phone scams in­volve call­ers claim­ing a per­son owes fed­eral in­come taxes or re­port­ing that a rel­a­tive is in jail. The scam­mer usu­ally de­mands pay­ment im­me­di­ately, of­ten want­ing money sent through a wire trans­fer ser­vice or by a pre­paid card.
The scam­mer may even in­sist that a per­son keep the call a se­cret and not alert the po­lice.
The FCC rec­om­mends you sim­ply hang up on any­one ask­ing for per­sonal or fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion.
Mi­crosoft will never proac­tively reach out to a cus­tomer to pro­vide un­so­licited tech­ni­cal sup­port, ac­cord­ing to the com­pany’s Safety and Se­cu­rity Cen­ter. Any com­mu­ni­ca­tion the com­pany has with a cus­tomer is ini­ti­ated by the cus­tomer.
The IRS never de­mands im­me­di­ate pay­ment or makes a call about taxes owed. And the fed­eral agency will never re­quire a tax­payer to use a spe­cific pay­ment method, such as a pre­paid debit card, or ask for credit or debit card num­bers over the phone.
The Fed­eral Trade Com­mis­sion urges peo­ple to re­port any fraud­u­lent caller, even af­ter send­ing them money. They’ll want more, the agency says. To re­port a phone scam, call 877-FTC-HELP or visit ftc.gov/com­plaint.
The Fed­eral Bureau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion rec­om­mends con­tact­ing a lo­cal law en­force­ment agency or the FBI’s In­ter­net Crime Com­plaint Cen­ter, IC3.com, about phone scams.
Re­cently, the New Mex­ico Tax­a­tion and Rev­enue Depart­ment has sub­stan­tially in­creased ef­forts to com­bat iden­tity theft and tax re­fund fraud and may re­quest in writ­ing ad­di­tional doc­u­men­ta­tion to ver­ify a re­fund claim.
If you be­lieve some­one has filed a state tax re­turn on your be­half with­out your per­mis­sion, call the de­part­ment at 866-285-2996.

I didn’t think so!

Well, this week I look forward to nothing. Yep, nothing going on this week as I sit here typing this. That doesn’t mean I have nothing to do, but what I have to do is normal stuff I do every week.

I do know that I have a class on Sunday afternoon that I’m helping with at Harley. It’s a group riding class for our chapter. A refresher for older members and hopefully a way to get new members to join the fun. Besides, that’s next week.

Of course there’s bound to be an April Fool’s Day ride on Saturday, but that’s just fun! Ride for 3 hours and come back to the store for free food.

Erin spent the night last night. That’s normal for us. She loves spending time with Nina and usually stays on her first night back here after Dilia. Erin spent the time in Dilia watching a branding of calves. That too is normal.

Dat’s it.  Peace.