BBB serving Alaska Oregon and Western Washington,<\/a> in a media release. \u201cToo many times we hear stories of people coming back from deployment only to be sucked into elaborate and costly scams.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\nBBB is alerting the military community and the public to malicious tactics that scammers use to steal money and identities.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u2022 Phone Scams: Impostors pose as Veterans Administration employees and call to \u201cverify\u201d personal information, sometimes using scare tactics like VA benefits cancellations to collecting birth dates, Social Security numbers and bank account information.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u2022 Rental Listings: Cyber thieves create bogus online rental listings and lure in potential victims by offering military discounts, requiring that deposits and rent be wired to landlords who are out of the country.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u2022 Military Loans: Sketchy lenders promise \u201cinstant approvals\u201d and no credit checks, but loans often carry extremely high interest rates and hidden fees.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u2022 Insurance Policies: Solicitors make false statements or inflate claims regarding the benefits of policies they offer, using high-pressured sales pitches to sell expensive\u2014and often unnecessary\u2014life insurance policies.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
BBB advises consumers to take the following precautions on Memorial Day:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u2022 Do the recon. Learn about businesses and charities by visiting bbb.org before making payments or donations.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u2022 Arm computers. Never click on unknown links in unsolicited emails, which may install malware and attempt to steal identities.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u2022 Take watch. Deployed service members can issue \u201cactive duty\u201d credit alerts to minimize the risk of identity theft. Creditors are then required to verify identification before making adjustments to accounts.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As Washingtonians take time to honor service men and women this Memorial Day, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) warns of scammers who have their sights set on ripping off military personnel and their families.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-19035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19035"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19035\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19035"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=19035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}