National Consumer Protection Week - Learn how to protect yourself from fraud

[hermione]

Hey Wisebreaders,

This past week, I decided to hold a sort of "Identity Theft and Fraud Prevention Week" at my blog Pecuniarities, which was to end today and happens to coincide with National Consumer Protection Week which starts tomorrow (I didn't know about this till yesterday).

I published a couple of posts on protecting yourself from identity theft:

• A warning about fake IRS emails about your economic stimulus check or tax refund and
• how to protect your identity if you lose your wallet,

and to wrap up the week, I compiled a list of links to government-provided resources on consumer protection and fraud prevention.

This list contains almost 100 links and covers a wide range of topics including:

• Information about different types of fraud and how to recognize them from various government agencies including the FTC, FBI, DOJ, HUD, FDA, HHS and more.
• A section on identity theft
• SPAM, Phishing and Internet fraud
• Where to report fraudulent activity you encounter
• Links for looking up your local consumer protection agencies and authorities
• Victim Assistance
• Non-government but recommended consumer sites
• Free annual credit report and bureau contact info
• Links to international (English-speaking) governments' consumer protection sites

Please pop over to my blog to have a look, bookmark it for future reference and share it with friends and family:
Consumer Safety Resources from the Government on SPAM, Scams, Fraud, Phishing and Identity Theft

A few of the government sites like consumer.gov and ftc.gov (the ones hosting National Consumer Protection Week) are down for scheduled maintenance till Monday morning, but you can get an idea of what it's about from my blog entry from yesterday:
March 1st-7th is National Consumer Protection Week!

Thanks for your time. See ya round the forum.
Penelope Pince