Despite the cold weather in the region, our office has been receiving phone calls recently about door-to-door salesmen offering various products and services. Sometimes the product is something the consumer doesn't have, but other times, it is a pitch to change services. While BBB does recognize that door-to-door sales are still a way for businesses to sell goods and services, there are things consumers should look out for if someone approaches their door.

Don’t be pressured into buying something you don’t want or need. A reputable company will let you check out the offer and compare bids from several installers. If the salesperson is really interested in gaining your business, they will leave a business card and have you contact them later. Make sure to read over any contract and make sure it includes all promises and incentives made by the salesperson. If the promises are not in the contract do not sign it.

Remember, the Federal Trade Commission’s Three-Day Cooling-Off Rule gives the customer three days to cancel purchases over $25 that are made in their home or at a location that is not the seller’s permanent place of business. Along with a receipt, salespeople should also include a completed cancellation form that customers can send to the company to cancel the agreement. By law, the company must give customers a refund within 10 days of receiving the cancellation notice.

Better Business Bureau and J.D. Power and Associates announced this week a new online content sharing agreement to help consumers research and identify trustworthy businesses such as car dealers, insurance agents, builders and movers.

In addition to finding trustworthy consumer advice and BBB Reliability Reports® on nearly 4 million businesses across North America, visitors to BBB’s Web site, www.bbb.org, can now access J.D. Power’s Power Circle Ratings on businesses and services. The ratings are an easy-to-use system developed by J.D. Power and Associates for JDPower.com and are based on the opinions of consumers who have actually used or owned the product or service being rated.

The American Banking Association is asking all banks to be on the alert for "money-mule" attacks -- funds-transfer fraud that most recently has involved exploiting the valid online banking credentials of small and medium-sized businesses. In a typical scenario, the targeted business receives a "spear phishing" e-mail which either contains an infected attachment or directs the victim to an infected Web site.

When victims open the attachment or visit the Web site, malware is installed on their computer that harvests their business or corporate bank account log-in information. The victims in this scheme are called "money mules" because they simply serve as a link between the business bank account and the hacker's bank account. In most cases, the funds disappear into a foreign bank account too quickly for the cyber-theft trail to be detected.

The Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center are advising banks to be alert for large-value payments to previously unknown customers, international payments just under monetary reporting thresholds, new, previously unfunded accounts with high-value, high-volume transactions, previously unfunded accounts with large-value incoming funds that are cashed out as soon as funds are cleared and domestic online bank-account transactions in which the account is accessed from overseas and transactions involve large-value funds.

*Thank you to the American Banking Association for the alert

For the 350 million people who use Facebook, a new phishing scam is threatening the safety of your computer and your identity. Most Facebook users receive e-mail notification when a friend writes on their wall, comments on a post or receives a direct message. Recently, an e-mail has appeared as a notification to users of a password change.  The text is as follows...

Dear user of facebook,

Because of the measures taken to provide safety to our clients, your password has been changed.
You can find your new password in attached document.

Thanks,
Your Facebook.

Because Facebook will NEVER change or reset your password automatically, do not open the attachment because it is most likely a computer virus or malware designed to harm data on your computer or steal personal information. Thanks to BBB in Southern Arizona for the heads up on this alert.

The 59th BBB Annual Meeting luncheon will be held at the Hyatt Regency Austin on Thursday, February 25th from 11:30am to 1:30pm. This is a special opportunity because we are honored to have Ms. Holly Petraeus, Director of BBB Military Line as our keynote speaker for the event. Ms. Petraeus is the wife of General David H. Petraeus, Commander of US Central Command, and has been kind enough to spend Military Saves Week here in Texas with us.

The cost for the event is only $50 per person and you must RSVP by February 19th so hurry because space is limited. For security reasons, we can allow no walk-ups so visit the following link here to download the registration form and find out more details on this very exciting event. All proceeds from the Annual Meeting luncheon go to Better Business Bureau Education Foundation.

Many of you are familiar with the granparent or distressed loved one scam. It's when you receive a call or e-mail from a scammer claiming they are "your favorite grandchild" or a friend of yours that is in trouble and needs money for a plane ticket, hotel for the night, etc. Contacting them back by phone is impossible and the situation is urgent so you're supposed to wire the money immediately. Of course you lose the money and your friend/grandchild knows nothing about this.

We had an Accreditd Business e-mail us yesterday saying they received an e-mail supposedly from a business associate that they knew worked overseas. This person apparently had their wallet or purse stolen which conveniently had their passport in it so they can't get back home. They don't want to be in a limbo state in a foreign country, so they wanted our Accredited Business to wire money to them to take care of the problem. They couldn't be reached by phone so our AB just needed to trust they would be paid back.

Luckily our Accredited Businesses have quite a bit of common sense and they did not follow through with the scam because they knew those 2 business associates travel with a good support network who help them out if the story was actually true. However, other businesses need to be on the lookout for suspicious e-mails from supposed employees or business partners because wiring money away is just about as effective as lighting it on fire...in less than a minute, you'll never see it again.

We've all heard of the scams on Craigslist with phony sellers scamming consumers with fake ads for items and homes. However, today a consumer called our office saying their identity had been stolen from Craigslist and used for setting up scams elsewhere. The consumer had posted an ad trying to sell an item and the scam artist had taken their information and used it as an alias to scam FedEx and at least 1 other company.

This is a bit of a twist from the usual pattern of Craigslist behavior, but one that makes sense if you put too much information online. It can be frustrating sometimes searching on Craigslist only to have an e-mail address as the only way to contact a seller, but people do this in order to keep scammers from gathering too much information about them. Yes it does draw a fine line between trust and confidentiality, but it's just as important for buyers to be careful on online classifieds as it is sellers.

If you have been a victim of a scam on Craigslist, eBay or any other online classified, contact your BBB immediately.