It seems like every time you turn around, scammers are working on a new test to an old scam all in an effort to steal your money, your identity, or both.

The Better Business Bureau of Acadiana is constantly working to help people understand the latest angles of old and new scams.

President of the BBB, Chris Babin, tells us you can see the scams that are circulating in our area by visiting their Scam Tracker feature on their website.

A person recently reported a phishing scam that allegedly involved a purchase. The Better Business Bureau explains a phishing scam this way,

In these schemes, scammers impersonating a trustworthy entity, such as a bank or mortgage company, employ communications to mislead recipients into providing personal information that the scammer will use to gain access to bank accounts or steal a recipient's identity. This type of scheme can also happen within the workplace as an email coming from the CEO, accounting, or another member of management seeking personal information.

In this Lafayette case, a person received a text message about having purchased a game tower for $612. The text read that if the person didn't purchase the system, they should call an 888 number.

The person did call the number, and the person who answered claimed to be working with Amazon. He told this person in order to fix the situation so this scam wouldn't happen to them again, he would need this person to download a program so the company's server could talk with the person's computer.

A Lie Has No Legs
Photo courtesy of Pawel Czerwinski-3DT_d9ttbv0 via-unsplash
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At that point, the person knew it was a scam and hung up the phone. The person had nothing stolen, and they did not allow the "manager" to "remotely connected their server" to this person's computer.

Better Business Bureau President Chris Babin says scammers constantly attempt these types of scams. He says the person from Lafayette did the right thing; they just hung up the phone.

Here are some more good tips on how to avoid having your information stolen:

You can check out the Better Business Bureau's Scam Tracker via their website. It allows you to see what kinds of scams are happening in any zip code in our country.

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