Avoid Price Gouging & Scams

Avoid Scams
Scammers are taking advantage of fears surrounding the Coronavirus. Here are some tips to help you keep the scammers at bay:

• Learn how to tell the difference between a real contact tracer and a scammer. Legitimate tracers need health information, not money or personal financial information.

• Don’t respond to texts, emails or calls about checks from the government. Here’s what you need to know.

  • The government will not charge you to receive a stimulus payment. It will not ask you to pay anything up front to get this money. No fees, charges, or anything else.

  • The government will not ask you for your Social Security Number, bank account, or credit card number. Anyone who does is a scammer.

• Ignore offers for vaccinations and miracle treatments or cures. Scammers are selling products to treat or prevent COVID-19 without proof that they work.

• Be wary of ads for test kits. Many test kits being advertised have not been approved by the FDA, and aren’t necessarily accurate. Almost all authorized home tests don’t provide rapid results and require you to send a test sample to a lab for analysis.

• Watch for emails claiming to be from the CDC or WHO. Use sites like coronavirus.gov and usa.gov/coronavirus to get the latest information. And don’t click on links from sources you don’t know.

• Do your homework when it comes to donations. Never donate in cash, by gift card, or by wiring money.

• Hang up on robocalls. Don’t press any numbers. Scammers are using illegal robocalls to pitch everything from scam Coronavirus treatments to work-at-home schemes. The recording might say that pressing a number will let you speak to a live operator or remove you from their call list, but it might lead to more robocalls, instead.

Report Scams

• If you either spot a scam or receive a suspicious inquiry, please report it to the Federal Trade Commission at www.ftc.gov/complaint.

More information can be found here.