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Editorial: Raise our guards higher
Op-Ed · April 24, 2014


How fast do you hit the e-mail “delete” key when a Nigerian banker promises millions if you would just help him get the money to America? How fast do you hang up when a telemarketer promises a “free” vacation?


Plenty of scam artists target the most gullible, but recent reports of a new scams, like the “Press 2” scam, employ seemingly innocuous demands that force us to raise our guards even higher.

In a “Press 2” scam, one might hear “This is not an automated call, press 2,” or “If this is not a fax machine, press 2.”

The requests are simple, and do not even promise something too good to be true. But when you press the key, it tricks you into placing a call through an expensive telephone service. And if the up-front charge is not enough, they also try to keep you talking for as long as possible to rack up exorbitant per-minute fees.

One wonders why people so clever cannot manage to find an honest living.

Most of us know not to give out personal information to strangers; now we come to a time when we find ourselves suspicious of even harmless requests.

Of course we feel it necessary to warn residents of these scams, yet we also find ourselves shaking our heads at the possibility of what this might mean to how we treat our fellow man who is genuinely in need.