Do you the most common telephone scams?

Telemarketing fraud is a crime. Criminals use the phone to commit many different types of fraud, including sweepstakes and lottery frauds, loan fraud, buying club memberships, and credit card scams.

Telephone scammers are good at what they do. They say anything and target everyone to try to cheat people out of money. They may call you and imply that they work for a company you trust, or they may send direct mail or place ads to convince you to call them.

Who’s Calling? explains several deceptive telemarketing schemes, and how you can protect yourself against them. In short, you can:

• Recognize how to identify the most common telemarketing scams.

• Report phone fraud to the FTC, providing important information to help law enforcement officials bring scammers to justice.

• Register your phone number on the National Do Not Call Registry. Registering can help limit the number of telemarketing calls you receive, so you can be more alert to calls you do get.

Check out the FTC website and learn how to protect yourself from telephone scams:

Federal Trade Commission