Four scams targeting baby boomers in 2019
Study says approximately $36.5 billion is lost every year to fraud, scams and exploitation.
Few things get me as fired up as people who prey on other’s vulnerabilities — particularly when it comes to finances. According to a study by True Link Financial, approximately $36.5 billion is lost every year to fraud, scams and exploitation.
As you might have guessed, senior citizens are often a popular target. People who target seniors realize they are often more susceptible to scams involving financial abuse. A variety of factors contribute to this vulnerability, including social isolation and loneliness.
You’ve likely heard about popular schemes that have taken seniors by surprise over the last few decades. One scam involves people who falsely represent public utilities in attempt to steal money or per- sonal identities. Another, coined the “grandparent scam,” includes people who pose as relatives or friends who urgently need money to get out of jail, pay hospital bills or leave a foreign country. And finally, the “sweetheart scammers” target lonely or newly widowed seniors through romantic relationships for their own financial gain.
Scams targeting senior citizens are nothing new, but the tactics these types of criminals use are constantly evolving. Therefore, it’s crucial to try to stay informed so that you can protect yourself.
Here are four scams targeting baby boomers today and what you can do to shut them down!
1. Medicare Scams. Medicare is a popular target for scammers seeking to file false claims, fill prescriptions, or sell people’s information online. It’s historically been an easy target because Medicare has been using social security numbers as account numbers. Beginning this year, however, Medicare is providing every
For many companies, a $5 billion fine would be crippling. But Facebook is not most companies. It had nearly $56 billion in revenue last year. This year, analysts expect around $69 billion, according to Zacks. As a one-time expense, the company will also be able to exclude the amount from its adjusted earnings results — the profit figure that investors and financial analysts pay attention to.
“This closes a dark chapter and puts it in the rearview mirror with Cambridge Analytica,” said Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives. “Investors still had lingering worries that the fine might not be approved. Now, the Street can breathe a little easier.”
Facebook has earmarked $3 billion for a potential fine and said in April it was anticipating having to pay up to $5 billion.
But while Wall Street — and likely Facebook executives — may be breathing a little easier, the fine alone has not appeased Facebook critics, including privacy advocates and lawmakers.
“The reported $5 billion penalty is barely a tap on the wrist, not even a slap,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut. “Such a financial punishment for a purposeful, blatant illegality is chump change for a company that makes tens of billions of dollars every year.”
He and others questioned whether the FTC
will force Facebook to make any meaningful changes to how it handles user data. This might include limits on what information it collects on people and how it targets ads to them. It’s currently unclear what measures the settlement includes beyond the fine.
Privacy advocates have been calling on the FTC to come down on Facebook for a decade, but over that time the company’s money, power and Washington influence has only increased.
“Privacy regulation in the U.S. is broken. While large after-thefact fines matter, what is much more important is strong, clear rules to protect consumers,” said Nuala O’Connor, president and CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology. The CDT is pushing for federal online privacy legislation.
Some have called on the FTC to hold Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally liable for the privacy violations in some way, but based on the party line vote breakdown, experts said this is not likely.
Marc Rotenberg, president of the nonprofit online privacy advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center, said he was “confused” as to why the Democratic commissioners didn’t support the settlement and said he suspects, without having seen the actual settlement, that this was due to the Zuckerberg liability question.
“But I thought that was misguided,” he said, adding that EPIC instead supports more wholesale
limits on how Facebook handles user privacy.
Since the Cambridge Analytica debacle erupted more than a year ago and prompted the FTC investigation, Facebook has vowed to do a better job corralling its users’ data. That scandal revealed that a data mining firm affiliated with President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign improperly accessed private information from as many as 87 million Facebook users through a quiz app. At issue was whether Facebook violated a 2011 settlement with the FTC over user privacy.
Other leaky controls have also since come to light. Facebook acknowledged giving big tech companies like Amazon and Yahoo extensive access to users’ personal data , in effect exempting them from its usual privacy rules. And it collected call and text logs from phones running Google’s Android system in 2015.
Wall Street appeared unfazed at the prospect of the fine. Facebook’s shares closed at $204.87 on Friday and added 24 cents after hours. The stock is up more than 50 percent since the beginning of the year. In fact, Facebook’s market value has increased by $64 billion since its April earnings report when it announced how much it was expecting to be fined.
Rep. David Cicilline, a Democrat from Rhode Island, said in a statement that the fine gives Facebook “a Christmas present five
months early. It’s very disappointing that such an enormously powerful
company that engaged in such serious misconduct is getting a slap on the wrist. This fine is a fraction of Facebook’s annual revenue.”