Some new scams are garnering the attention of the Better Business Bureau. 

If you've ever been bored and perusing Facebook, you've probably come across a number of quizzes that ask that you silly questions and then populate a result based on your answers. 

The BBB is warning that some of those quizzes may contain embedded links placed by hackers to gain access to your personal accounts.

If you choose to click on the quiz, the BBB said there are some red flags that may tip you off to the risk of hacking. If the quiz asks you to sign into a social site, give your email address, or send to several friends to gain you quiz results you may be putting yourself at risk.

Once the hacker has your information, they can go in and pose as you and send the corrupted quiz to your friends to gain access to more individuals personal information.

The BBB made some suggestions on how to prevent the risk of hacking, including adjust your privacy settings and being very strict about what information you share, removing personal details from your profile and not accepting friend requests from anyone you don't know.

In addition to Facebook scams, the BBB also says that cell phone porting scams are also becoming a growing concern.

How cell phone porting works is that a scammer will find your name and phone number and start searching for as much information on you as they can and then contact your cell phone provider impersonating you. They inform the company that your phone was stolen and request the number be “ported” to another provider and device.

Once the scammer has your phone number they now have a way to reset your passwords on your accounts by having a texted code sent to the phone that they now control. This includes personal banking, emails, social media accounts and even tax preparation software.

The BBB suggests a couple ways to protect yourself:

  • •Contact your cell phone company and ask about port-out authorization. You can have additional security added to your cell phone account by adding a unique pin or a verification question, which will make it more difficult for someone to port-out your phone.
  • Call your mobile phone company if your phone suddenly switches to "emergency call service only" or something similar. That's what happens when your phone number has been transferred to another phone.
  • Watch out for phishing attempts, alert messages from financial institutions, texts in response to two-factor authorization requests.

If you have fallen victim to a scam, you can now report it even faster with the BBB Scam Tracker, which shows you hot spots of where scams are taking place all over the country and how many reports have been made.

 

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