SENIORS ALIVE! FOR APRIL

Here is your Greater Hillsborough Senior Services newsletter for April.

Please note on the Events Calendar that the trip to the McAuliffe Planetarium has been changed to Friday, April 13.  All the other particulars are the same.  Cost of transportation $6, entrance fee for seniors $10.50 and leaving Shaw’s parking lot at 1 p.m.

Have fun!

FCC Warnings About One-Ring Cell Phone Scams

"One-ring” cell phone scam can ding your wallet so be forewarned.  Don't call back!

This alert was issued by the Federal Trade Commission, Consumer Information

Who’s calling now? That number doesn’t ring a bell. Hold the phone, says the Federal Trade Commission. You could be a potential victim of the growing "one-ring” cell phone scam.

Here’s how it works: Scammers are using auto-dialers to call cell phone numbers across the country. Scammers let the phone ring once — just enough for a missed call message to pop up.

The scammers hope you’ll call back, either because you believe a legitimate call was cut off, or you will be curious about who called. If you do, chances are you’ll hear something like, “Hello. You’ve reached the operator, please hold.” All the while, you’re getting slammed with some hefty charges — a per-minute charge on top of an international rate. The calls are from phone numbers with three-digit area codes that look like they’re from inside the U.S., but actually are associated with international phone numbers — often in the Caribbean. The area codes include: 268, 284, 473, 664, 649, 767, 809, 829, 849 and 876.

If you get a call like this, don’t pick it up and don’t call the number back. There’s no danger in getting the call: the danger is in calling back and racking up a whopping bill.

If you're tempted to call back, do yourself a favor and check the number through online directories first. They can tell you where the phone number is registered.

If you’ve been a victim of the “one-ring” scam, try to resolve the charges with your cell phone carrier. If that doesn’t work, file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission.

And as a general rule: Read your phone bill often — line by line. If you don’t recognize or understand a charge, contact your carrier.

February 10, 2014

by Colleen Tressler

Consumer Education Specialist

AARP's 6 Steps to Safeguard Your Privacy on Facebook

Increasingly we are all vulnerable to our privacy being hacked.  Until Facebook releases its new menu, there are steps you can take now to make it more difficult for companies to mine data from your FB account.

1. Adjust Your Third-Party Apps Settings

Those aforementioned quizzes and other apps on Facebook usually require you to grant access in order to use them — and it’s easy to remember to “ungrant” that access once you’re finished. "Access" means those apps remain linked to your account, with access to your personal information. Facebook comes right out and states this, though the reminder is placed deep within your apps settings page:

"On Facebook, your name, profile picture, cover photo, gender, networks, username, and user id are always publicly available to both people and apps. Learn why. Apps also have access to your friends list and any information you choose to make public."

The good news is it’s fairly easy to unlink those apps, if you know how:

    Click the downward-facing triangle at the top right of your profile page, then scroll down to "Settings."

    Once in the Settings, click the “Apps” section. You’ll be taken to a list of all third-party apps that you’ve granted access to your account.

    Scroll to the bottom of this list, locate the “Apps, Websites and Plugins” box, click edit, and click “Disable Platform.” On the same App Settings page, find the “Apps Others Use” box, and click Edit. You’ll then be able to select which of your personal information is shared when any of your friends use apps, including your bio, your birthday, your recent Facebook activity and even your religious and political affiliations.

2. Tweak Your Sharing Settings

You can dictate who will see what you post to Facebook. By default, your profile is set to “Public,” meaning anyone on the social network can see your information and posts. Here’s how to limit the audience that can see what you post:

    Go to your Facebook settings by following the directions above.

    Click on “Privacy” and you’ll be taken to a page where you can edit “Who can see your posts?” Best practice is to choose “Friends Only” for many or all of these settings. You can also customize a list of Facebook friends who will see your posts, or choose to keep your posts private to yourself only.

    In the Privacy settings area, you can also opt out of Facebook’s facial recognition system, which scans photos posted to the sites and makes tagging suggestions to other users.

3. Get a Privacy Checkup

Facebook does offer a handy link that allows a quick adjustment to your account settings.

    Click the question mark in the top right section of the menu bar on your profile page.

    Scroll down to “Privacy Checkup.”

    You’ll be able to quickly view who can see your posts, which apps are currently linked to your account, and what personal information can be seen, and by whom. The checkup option allows you to adjust these all in one place — and lets you edit personal information (update or delete your hometown, relationship status, etc.) — but it shouldn’t replace the deeper dives listed above.

4. Limit or Restrict Ad Preferences

If you don’t want Facebook to serve up custom ads based on your personal information and site use, you can opt out of that program as well.

    Once signed in, go to the Facebook Ad Preferences settings page.

    In the Ad settings section, toggle each option to “Off.” This restricts Facebook from using its affiliated sites, and apps you’ve used through its own site, to serve up ads based on your data.

    In the Ad Preferences section, you can also view advertisers, companies and topics with which you are linked through your actions on Facebook. Hundreds of topics appeared on my list, and more than two dozen specific companies — a few of which I had never heard of. If that makes you uncomfortable, you can delete topics or companies by hovering over its respective icon and clicking the X.

5. Turn Off Your Mobile Device’s Location Services

This privacy tweak isn’t restricted to Facebook, but the site is one of many that uses the GPS location tracking in your smartphone or mobile device to gain insight into your personality and habits. You can restrict this access by changing your settings on your device.

iOS users (iPhones and iPads): Open your Phone Settings, click to “Privacy” and then to “Location Services.” You have the option to turn off all location services, and while from a privacy standpoint that’s advisable, if you use your phone’s maps function often that could be problematic. In that case, you can scroll down and disable location services on an app-by-app basis, including Facebook.

Android users: Go to Account Settings, then “Location” and make sure the Facebook access slider is set to  “Off.”

6. View Yourself as Others on Facebook Do

One useful tool Facebook offers its users is the “View As” option, which allows you to see your profile page as any Facebook user, either a stranger or one of your friends, would when they look at your page. To see this view:

    Go to your profile page and click on the three dots in the right-hand corner of your cover photo (the large rectangular photo at the top of this page, not to be confused with your profile photo, which is the smaller square photo that appears with your name across the entire site).

    Scroll down to the “View As” option.

    Once there, you can see how your page appears to the general public. You also can see how it appears to any of your Facebook friends, allowing you to make sure that any customized settings you’ve enabled are working properly.