Life Happens 365 - Are You Managing the Risk?

 By Diane Tait Image courtesy Pixabay If you enjoy surfing the web to view newsfeeds, then you know you must take what you see with a grain of salt.  That's because everything you read online isn't necessarily accurate or unbiased.  During the past few years, fake news has grown from a curiosity to a nuisance that threatens to undermine the usefulness of the Internet.  Face it, fake news has been used to manipulate everything from public opinion to election results.  It can also affect your health, if you believe fake news about dubious COVID cures, or your financial future if you take to heart any spurious stock tip you find online.  In short, fake news could short circuit the information all of us peruse on the Information Superhighway.  As bad as all that sounds, there's a more insidious form of digital fakery that's even more dangerous.  Called deepfakes, this technology can be used to create digital duplicates of virtually anyone to convince everyone of anything.  

  By Diane Tait Image courtesy Pixabay Nobody likes to be duped, bamboozled, or scammed.   Yet the trend online and off shows that fraud is at an all-time high.   Why not?   Where scammers of yesteryear had to show their faces to their victims to perpetrate fraud, today all it takes is a click of a mouse or smartphone key to fleece people out of their hard-earned money.   So pervasive and widespread is fraud today that the insurance industry instituted what they call the Insurance Fraud Hall of Shame to educate the public on the ever more sophisticated methods being used to defraud the public.   In today’s blog, I will share some of the more outrageous frauds from the 2020 list as well as giving you 10-tips on how to keep from being victimized.

By Diane Tait Image courtesy Public Domain Vectors Halloween is supposed to be a night when kids and some adults don costumes to play at being something they’re not.   Whether the costume of choice is a superhero, a witch, a goblin, or just an opportunity to pretend for a few hours that you’re a doctor, an astronaut or the devil himself, the charade is something done in fun.   Unfortunately, the start of the holiday season is also the time of year when conmen and women kick their nefarious activities into high gear.   Just like Halloween, these scam artists try to trick the unwary into believing they’re something they’re not.