HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. — Online and text message scams are on the rise.
Tim Harrington lives in St. Petersburg and told Tampa Bay 28 he started noticing them a few years ago.
"It’s just gotten progressively worse since. Like it’s, it’s completely out of control," said Harrington.
Former law enforcement officer turned cyber security expert and now principal owner of Equitas Cyber, Edith Santos, has seen the increase.
"The scams have been pretty much the same, what’s evolved is the execution of those scams using technology," said Santos.
Tampa Bay 28 also spoke with Chad Burney, Chief Financial Officer for GTE Financial, about the latest ways scams have evolved.
"One of the scams that has come up lately is what we call the pop up scam…That’s basically where the senior citizen or the elderly person is online, perusing online and all of a sudden they get a pop up, a warning message," said Burney.
People are clicking the links on those messages and a virus downloads on their device.
Then typically, there’s a phone number associated with the pop up message claiming to be tech support.
"That tech support is the bad actors. So they call, they charge them on their credit card for a certain amount of money to fix their computer but they never fix it. That’s one that’s really coming up lately," said Burney.
Experts continue to see more text message scams, where for example, a fraudster claims you owe money, is offering you a job, or says you have to pay tolls and sends a compromised link.
"The first time I started getting scam texts was the toll scams that were going on," said Harrington.
"Text messaging is kind of like the vehicle that the bad actors put their links on for members to click on a link which then installs stuff," said Burney.
Both Santos and Burney have seen senior citizens being targeted more than other groups.
They’re encouraging everyone to avoid clicking links, don’t trust anyone asking for your information, and change the passwords to your accounts.
"Consumers use the same password for every site they have an account on. Take your password from a password, and make it a passphrase. And what I mean by that is create a 16 or greater character password but make it a phrase that you can remember," said Burney.
"For example let’s just say it’s a Southwest or American Airlines app or United you can basically create your password to say 'I hate flying' or 'I love flying' and then use the first letter of each one,'" said Santos.
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