Pierce Associates LLC

COVID-19 Email Scams are on the Rise.

Email scammers are taking advantage of COVID-19 fears by impersonating health officials and tricking people into giving up personal information. Areas identified are phishing schemes that involve scammers posing as authorities such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization and the U.S. government.
These schemes include making false claims about outbreaks in your area, national lockdowns or quarantines, and claims of new “urgent” safety measures that you must take. Unfortunately, there’s no limit to the extent to which scammers will try to use fear to catch you off guard and lure you into opening and interacting with their phishing emails.
Filters may not catch everything, so it takes a team effort to protect valuable private information. When opening emails, remember:
* Don’t click links or open attachments from unsolicited emails.
* Never provide your username, password or any sensitive information in response to an email.
* Never execute a financial transaction in response to an email. Validate any financial requests with information that’s not contained in the requesting email.
* Report suspicious emails.
* If you think you fell victim to a scam, don’t try to hide it. Report it right away to be able to minimize the impact.
Having a heightened awareness of scams and thoughtfully using your email are your best tools to safeguard your personal information.

https://cbsn.ws/2CSK106

40% of Americans only one missed paycheck away from poverty Many otherwise middle-class people are "liquid-asset poor," meaning they can't withstand even a brief financial shock

Be aware - Equifax will not be calling 143 million customers regarding their exposure.

Watch out for scammers pretending to be from Equifax The phone call appears to be from Equifax, but you might not think that's unusual since you recently signed up for free credit monitoring after you learned