- So one of the things that concerns us on a daily basis is our use of social media because we're all on it so much more than we ever have been before, which means it's a really the perfect playground for a fraudster.

Especially since Covid, we are just simply a more captive audience.

And so it allows that scammer to get in front of us more than they ever have before.

Several years back, BBB created a really useful tool and it's called BBB Scam Tracker.

And you can find it on our website.

It can be used two different ways from a consumer perspective.

Certainly we want consumers to use it to report when they have fallen victim to a scam or they have possibly been introduced to a scam but luckily, we're able to avoid being ripped off.

And so you can literally report anything from shopping scams to a door-to-door selling scam, really anything.

Now that's important for you to report it because that allows us to start investigations and ensure other consumers don't fall victim.

But all of that data is shared with agencies like the Federal Trade Commission and the Attorney General's Office so that they can also start watching trends, see what parts of the country things are happening in so that they can also then hopefully help put a stop to it.

But the other thing is, is that when you've been offered something that seems to be too good to be true, you can use Scam Tracker as a research tool.

So for example, let's say you're trying to buy that French bulldog.

You can go to Scam Tracker and put in puppy scams and see if that website or that phone number or that address has been reported by someone else in the past.

So it's gonna help you know that this is something you wanna stay away from.

So it's a proactive tool and it's also a reporting tool.

Just go to BBB.org/Scamtracker and it's gonna pop for you right away.

You can find things through keyword searches.

You can find them through the community you're in.

You can research it through the name of the scan really anything.

And it's gonna give you everything you need to not only report activity, but also identify activity that's similar to what you're interested in - [Narrator] Made possible by a grant from the West End Home Foundation, Senior Trust Digital Initiative.