Scammers will stop at nothing to get your personal information. As soon as one scam has outlived its usefulness, another scam pops up to replace it. All of these scams have one purpose, to obtain your personal information to take your money and utilize your credit.
A new scam is up and running where someone calls Social Security beneficiaries while posing as a Social Security employee. These scammers inform the beneficiary that they are eligible for a modest cost-of-living increase in Social Security benefits, but to receive this increase the beneficiary must verify personal information, including their Social Security number. The scammers then use the person’s Social Security number to contact Social Security to change the beneficiary’s banking information to an account controlled by the scammers and they successfully take the beneficiary’s Social Security payment.
Unfortunately, this scam is successful because Social Security does contact beneficiaries from time-to-time to verify information, but there are some steps people can take to avoid being a victim of the scam.
First of all, Social Security is not going to call someone to inform they are receiving a cost-of-living increase. A cost-of-living increase is decided by inflation and is provided to all Social Security recipients at the beginning of a year. Additionally, if you are unsure who is calling you, and you should be skeptical when someone asks for your personal information, you should ask the person if you can call them back to verify if they are really from Social Security. If the number they provide does not match-up exactly with a listed number for Social Security, you should not provide that person with any information.
The only sure-fired way to avoid providing personal information to a scammer is go directly to a Social Security office to inquire if they need information from you.
