Independent newsletter. Not a government agency, and not connected to Social Security, Medicare, the IRS, the FTC, the FBI, USPS or any company we write about. Their names appear only to say who scammers pretend to be. General information about scams, not legal, financial or insurance advice, and we can’t check your message, letter or caller. No claim to original U.S. Government works.
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Drafted with AI tools, approved by a person.
Each issue’s three are ranked by the strongest evidence that a scam is spreading, and each item’s Why it’s first line says which, with source and dates. Strongest first: an official count from the last two weeks; a count from a company that sees the calls; a search term rising on Google Trends; that week’s official word on it, with no number; steady search interest; news volume; our count of new posts on a public scam forum; last year’s totals; and, when nothing counts it, our pick, called that. Search interest is relative, never a count of people, and forum posts show what people chose to share, not how common a scam is. If the top three would skip a parent’s phone or a kid’s job hunt, the best item from that end takes slot 3, and the issue says why.