Dear Kim,
A new Facebook friend says she has an aunt who is very good with cryptocurrencies.
After a bit of wrestling with the names, I verified that they are real people.
The aunt showed me three operations in which I earned 15 percent with an investment of $500 in 10 minutes while watching them on WhatsApp.
I have not lost any money at this time.
I wanted to know your opinion before I gave the aunt $10,000.
—Jim from Sacramento, California
Dear Kim: A new Facebook friend says she has an aunt who is very good with cryptocurrencies. She wanted to know your opinion before giving the aunt $10,000.
dear jim
I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, Jim. This is a classic Pig slaughter scam.
I know it all seems like things just fall into place, and that’s the point.
How am I so sure? What is happening here follows exactly the script these criminals use. I’ll summarize it for you.
Cold outreach: Start with a random text, friend request, DM, or comment.
Sometimes the person claims it’s the wrong number or they just liked your profile picture. They are friendly and talkative.
I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t keep talking if I dialed the wrong number.
Meal time: Your new friend is slowly gaining confidence.
They want to know about your life, maybe send you photos and tell you what they’re up to.
Radio host Kim Komando offers advice to help people navigate the world of technology
After a while, the money appears. It is generally presented under the guise of an investment opportunity.
They did so well in crypto that they want to share it with you too.
Fatten the pig: This is where money changes hands, but only in small amounts.
They will ask you to take a trial with a small investment. Surprise, your money is already growing!
The person could send you a video, photos, or even an account to log in and see how well your investment is doing.
Little by little, they will convince you to add more and more to the account.
Sacrifice: Now you are convinced and have invested even more. At this stage, victims may receive tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Targets with higher net worth could have millions with the scammer.
You may realize that something is wrong at this stage and ask to withdraw your money. Now it is too late. Just press and the scammer will disappear, along with all your money.
It’s time to unfriend and block your new friend.
Dear Kim,
I am a 32 year old woman with an overprotective single father. This week, I found out that she secretly placed an AirTag in my car.
I value my freedom and privacy very much. I often go out of my way to delete my social media presence.
Dear Kim: I am a 32-year-old woman with an overprotective single father. This week I found out she secretly put an AirTag in my car.
I make sure that only a select handful of friends can contact me and even fewer know what I’m doing. When I was alerted that an unknown AirTag (which I immediately knew where it came from) was following me, I was furious.
I called my father and confronted him. He was surprised that I found out and refused to tell me where he was.
I finally found the AirTag hidden under my car, stuck to a magnet. Honestly, I just want to disappear and never see him again.
What do I say to him to make it clear to him that this is not right?
Dear reader, I’m afraid you are too old for this.
You are in a difficult situation: you love your father but not his controlling nature. It is unreasonable for a parent to place a hidden tracker on an adult daughter’s car.
You definitely need to talk it over with him.
Explain that hiding a tracker means they don’t trust you and don’t respect your independence.
He will surely emphasize that he only put the tracker on your car because he loves and cares about you.
After all, he was the only one who raised you.
That’s great, but there are better ways to demonstrate it.
Maybe you can call or text him more often to calm him down.
Tell him that when you travel, you will share an itinerary. Take a self-defense class.
Make sure they know you’ll turn on real-time tracking if you ever take a rideshare.
You’ll only feed the beast if you enable location sharing on your phone or use an app like Life360. You need to set limits.
Finally, some details about Apple AirTags. The AirTag must be within approximately 33 feet or 10 meters of an iPhone or other device for its Bluetooth signal to be detected.
You obviously use an iPhone because it alerts you when an unknown AirTag is nearby.
For Android users, the process is slightly different. To detect AirTags using an Android device, you can download Apple’s ‘Tracker Detect’ app, which is available on the Google Play Store.
In case you’re wondering how long the AirTag battery lasts, about a year.