4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2018
editor@dailyastorian.com
KARI BORGEN
Publisher
JIM VAN NOSTRAND
Editor
Founded in 1873
JEREMY FELDMAN
Circulation Manager
DEBRA BLOOM
Business Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN
Production Manager
CARL EARL
Systems Manager
OUR VIEW
Beware of scams!
Schemes attack the
vulnerable — be safe,
don’t get snared
T
ype fonts at newspapers come in
all sorts of sizes, but in the old
hot metal days the largest used to
be a giant 72 point.
We can’t spare that space right now,
so readers will have to pretend the next
sentences appear in giant letters.
We’ll put it in bold, then.
If it looks too good to be true, it is
not true.
If an online contact warns you are
in danger, but can pay to avoid the
problem, it is not true.
Beware.
It sounds like simple advice, but
even after law enforcement agencies
and media have sounded the alarm,
people are still falling for scams.
Please don’t.
We take no pleasure in writing news
stories from local police logs about our
neighbors who have been duped out of
money they can ill afford to lose.
As technology takes a central part of
our daily lives, more and more criminal
charlatans are finding creative ways to
bilk people of their savings.
The Clatsop County Sheriff’s Office
and the Astoria, Warrenton, Seaside
and Cannon Beach police departments
have all reported scams. We fear their
repeated warnings still fall on some
deaf ears. In the first six months of
2018, area police agencies documented
hundreds of thousands of dollars lost.
Lately, the sheriff’s office has
received many reports of scammers
claiming to be local law enforcement.
Scammers sometimes claim that an
agency has a warrant for a person’s
arrest, then offer a way to pay money to
avoid it happening.
It’s a scam, however plausible it
sounds.
The mere mention of the Internal
Revenue Service causes otherwise
rational people to be duped by scam-
mers. The federal agency in charge
of collecting your taxes doesn’t initi-
ate contact via social media or email.
Its real agents don’t ask for payments
to anyone other than the United States
Treasury. Its website at irs.gov has a
detailed page describing scams and
how to avoid them. It makes for chill-
ing reading.
Our recent news story on this issue
(“Law enforcement notices a rise in
elaborate scams,” The Daily Astorian,
Oct. 24.) noted that recent scams have
included claims that people can col-
lect a large prize for a small fee or have
an arrested family member who needs
help.
Some tips we published with this
story bear repeating:
• Government agencies typically
already know your basic personal
information;
• Agencies are unlikely to call to
announce a coming arrest and never
seek money through prepaid debit cards
like Green Dot;
• If you haven’t participated in a con-
test, you probably don’t win anything
— and you certainly don’t want to pay
a fee (or “taxes”) to receive it.
Frankly, it’s best to avoid sending
money over the internet or phone when
possible, unless you are sure you are
detailing with a bona fide vendor.
Phone and email scammers often
access personal information through
social media accounts to seem cred-
ible during conversations. They are
skilled at building long-term rapport
with potential targets. This often hap-
pens through online dating sites, where
the scammers work patiently to create
a plausible “relationship” with their tar-
gets, then ask for money to bail them
out of a fictional predicament.
Your social media accounts are ripe
for sharing information that scammers
and identity thieves can use. Those
online posts where friends ask you
to share the name of your first pet or
where you met your spouse may appear
harmless fun. But those are the same
questions financial institutions ask you
when they set up security questions to
access your online accounts. Would you
post these private secrets on the bath-
room wall at the busy Jubitz truck stop
in Portland? Sharing those details on
Facebook is the online equivalent.
The most sickening aspect is that
elderly people — who grew up in a
more trusting age — are the most vul-
nerable to scams. Many don’t have the
same familiarity with technology as
younger people whose entire lives have
been lived in the personal computer or
smartphone age.
These days, a scam caller can be
anywhere in the world, because soft-
ware exists to indicate that the num-
ber they are calling from is in your area
code.
Because of embarrassment, victims
can be shy about reporting they’ve been
scammed.
Don’t.
If you suspect you are being
scammed, call your local law enforce-
ment agency with your suspicions
before handing over any money.
Don’t think of it as canceling
Thanksgiving. Just think of it as right-sizing
the holiday schedule. We now break up the
final months of the year into more practical
segments: Halloween; Pre-Black-Friday;
Black Friday; Post-Black-Friday; Pre-
Christmas; and Christmas.
Black Friday, of course, starts on the
Thursday that used to be Thanksgiving (now
known as the final day of Pre-Black Friday)
and extends through the Friday following
what used to be Thanksgiving. Then it’s the
Post-Black-Friday season until Dec. 11, at
which time the two-week Pre-Christmas
season begins. That is followed, of course,
by Christmas, which begins on Dec. 25 and
continues until next Halloween.
Honestly, I can’t believe I had to go
through all that again. If you people really
cared about Christmas (and you should’ve
started caring weeks ago), you would READ
THE MEMOS!!
We are in the process of finalizing a
nationwide turkey ban that Congress will pass
during an emergency session prior to the end
of Pre-Black Friday. This is a precautionary
step to ensure a smooth transition away from
Thanksgiving.
If you spot friends or neighbors purchasing
cranberry sauce or setting up gourd-filled
wicker cornucopias, please report them imme-
diately to local authorities. Chances are they
also plan to ignore mandatory pre-December
hall-decking laws. You do these trypto-
phan-addicted scofflaws no favors by letting
them get away with non-Christmas-related
activity.
To go with the overall schedule change, we
have added several new Christmas carols you
should start learning now. They include: “The
49 Days of Christmas”; “I Heard the Bells
on Black Friday Eve”; “Post-Black-Friday
Blues (My Baby Took a Turkey and Ran)”;
“Shopping, Shopping, Shopping, Shop!
(That’s What the Lord Would Have Us Do)”;
and “Grandma Will Soon Get Run Over by a
Reindeer.”
Lyrics for those songs and others were in
the September memo, which I’m sure you
all saved, right? Or did you delete it? You
people are impossible. I’ll resend the memo,
but if we get to Mid-Post-Black Friday Mass
and you don’t know the words, that’s on you.
Understand?
Moving on.
Are your holiday cards ready yet? You
should get those done and in the mail by
the end of the week. (Keep in mind that if
you have a pet, the animal must be in your
Christmas card photo wearing a Santa hat
or, at minimum, felt reindeer antlers. That
includes pet fish.)
At home, you should be using only coffee
mugs that carry witty Christmas slogans along
the lines of: “Bah Hum-Mug”; “Jolly AF”;
“Let’s Get Lit!” (only if it includes a drawing
of a lit-up Christmas tree); and “Don’t Ring
Sleigh Bells Until I’ve Had My Coffee!”
Above all else, I hope you all have started
your Christmas shopping. If you haven’t, I
have one question: Why do you hate both
Christmas and America?
GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER! Get out
there and start enjoying the now-extended
holiday season. It’s the most wonderful darn
time of the year, for Prancer’s sake.
And it starts RIGHT NOW!
Rex Huppke is a Chicago Tribune columnist.
Dreamstime/Tribune News Service
Gift cards are almost as good as cash for scammers. Anyone who demands payment by
gift card is always a scammer, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
Merry Christmas!
Thanksgiving is
canceled, now get
out there and shop
H
alloween is over. Merry Christmas.
We have a lot of work to do before
Dec. 25, so I’m going to need you all
to focus.
Hopefully you got last week’s memo and
made sure to eat all your Halloween candy
immediately after trick-or-treating was over.
Any leftover Halloween candy must be
unwrapped, melted down and remolded into
festive holiday shapes, ideally with a drizzle
of peppermint frosting on
top. No exceptions.
Please clear your yards
of any Halloween decor
— tombstones, fake spider
webbing, pumpkins — and
make sure the area is prepped
for light-up candy canes,
REX
long strands of twinkling
HUPPKE
colored LEDs and no fewer
than three inflatable Christmas characters,
including at least one Santa Claus (minimum
height: 3 feet).
We only have 49 days until Christmas, and
the clock is ticking. Try to keep up.
Have you planned your Christmas
meal yet? No? Well, that’s just great. Good
luck finding yams to candy and a decent ham
at this late date. You’re really screwing this
up.
I realize there has been some grumbling
about this year’s timeline. I hear people
saying, “It’s too soon!” or “What about
Thanksgiving, doesn’t that come first?”
You people make me nuts. Thanksgiving
used to come first, but if you paid even the
slightest bit of attention to the memo we sent
out in August you would know the traditional
Halloween-Thanksgiving-Christmas order of
holidays has been strategically transitioned to
a more cost-effective model.
The loan company LendEDU conducted a
study that found American consumers spend a
measly $2.98 billion on Thanksgiving dinner.
But the National Retail Federation is pre-
dicting more than $720 billion in Christmas
spending this season.
A simple cost-benefit analysis showed us
that Thanksgiving was no longer pulling its
weight. In fact, the stress of getting together
with relatives, combined with post-Thanks-
giving-feats sluggishness, was distracting
people from Christmas preparation enough
to offset any fiscal benefit the food-centric
holiday could offer.