Examine your anti-scam safety during National Consumer Protection Week

This week serves as a good reminder that there's never a bad time to increase your financial safety.

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) – Not very many people hope to have their money stolen from them, so increasing your financial safety truly is something everybody can benefit from. The problem is scammers keep getting more and more creative.

“There are some things that are really sophisticated about these scams, and about the angles that they take, and about how they evolve over time”, says Josh Planos of the Better Business Bureau.

Naturally, one of the most prevalent scams the BBB is seeing is the online purchasing scam.

“We’ve never seen more activity online than we have in the past 24 months”, says Planos. “The likelihood is that in 2022 we’re probably going to set new records.”

The top scams include some that you might expect these days. The burgeoning world of cryptocurrency offers some new opportunities to be parted from your money, and employment scams are on the rise year-over-year, despite having taken a bit of a dip recently. One scam you may not have expected to be so prevalent, though, is the home improvement scam.

“Certainly with the price of lumber being what it was, and how much the market fluctuated, there were folks looking to provide cut rates, discounted rates, for all manner of do-it-yourself home improvements or improvements that required a contractor”, Planos says. Unfortunately, as you might have seen coming, the scammer doesn’t hold up their end of the bargain.

There are many diverse types of scams out there, but one thing so many of them have in common is time, or the lack thereof. Many of them create a sense of urgency to get you to act; you have only a narrow window of time to lock in their “great deal”.

Planos has one recommendation above all others, though: “If you can give yourself the opportunity to take a breath, and even just give yourself, at minimum, a pause, I promise you you’ll be safer off in 2022.”

While you’re pausing, think about just how safe you are with your money. There’s never a bad time to self-audit, and it can only help you.