Scam Alerts

There are thousands of new scams every year, which can be challenging to keep up with them all. However, remember these few tips, and you can avoid most scams while protecting yourself and your family. Never send a wire transfer or gift card to someone you’ve never met. Wire transfers or gift cards act the same as cash does, which makes it impossible to trace. If someone is trying to convince you to pay this way, hang up and file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Avoid clickbait. Always think twice about an ad that pops up or clicking on links from an email. Clicking on a link will download malware onto your computer or smart device, allowing cyber thieves to steal your identity. Scammers are great a mimicking official seals, fonts, and other details. If you recognize the email but the message is off, delete, block, and report the email as a phish. If it is too good to be true, it probably is. This goes without explanation. Many scammers will offer a discount rate, offer all the added services then ask for money upfront. Never pay for a service upfront. Always check reviews and profiles at the Better Business Bureau to see what other people have experienced. Use extreme caution when dealing with someone online. Scammers will use social media, dating websites, Craigslist, and many other sites to reach potential targets. They can quickly feel like friends, which is part of the con for you to trusting them. Never share personal info. Again, this goes without explanation, but never give out your personal information, such as your banking information, birthdate, and social security numbers. Always read over invoices, and do not be intimidated when a scammer uses those scary tactics...

More Social Power

Facebook has introduced a powerful tool for managing online advertising campaigns that is being heralded as a major advancement in targeted marketing. If you are using social media-based ads to reach potential renters for your multifamily property, the Facebook Power Editor could change and enhance the campaigns you create. It allows you to create and manage multiple advertising efforts at once, which means you can parse your ad budget according to the markets you most wish to reach. Placement of the ads within Facebook is a major added feature offered by the Power Editor, which will allow you to select where you want your ads to show up. You might choose to advertise in the Facebook News Feed (where users are accustomed to seeing posts from their Facebook Friends) or continue to advertise in the right side bar of the site, where advertising has traditionally appeared. However, many Facebook users say that they no longer see the right hand column, considering it a “blind spot” where ads will be ignored. You can also use the Power Editor to ensure your ads only appear on mobile devices, which is increasingly the way most users engage with Facebook – more users now use phones or tablets to reach the site than computers. And that group is getting larger – the number of people accessing the internet via a mobile phone has increased over 60 percent to 818.4 million since 2011. The mobile version of Facebook is a very different interface from the web-based interface, and ads must be formatted differently to reach mobile users. Using the Power Editor, which can only be accessed on the Google Chrome browser, you can decide on how large of an audience you’d like to reach. Targeting specific groups within the...