While the holiday season ushers in delicious foods, festive decorations and general warm feelings, there is always someone looking to take advantage. Whether it comes in the form of an email, website, phone scam or even door-to-door scam fundraising, sadly there are people looking to cash in on others goodwill. This time of year is a prime time for scammers to go to work on the unsuspecting. Always make sure you ask for ID and know where your donations are going; especially if someone comes to your door soliciting. Never give your personal information out to someone who calls you asking for donations; make sure you call them or access their website to be sure it is legit. Additionally, scammers know that this time of year, consumers are looking for extra money for holiday gifts and will use get-rich-quick scams to gain access to your personal information or direct funds. A recent story from KDKA in Pittsburgh showed how scammers were targeting former lottery winners, claiming they had won additional money, but needed to advance the caller tax payments to access the new winnings. Other phone scams recently have included fake hostage scams where the caller claims to have a relative being held hostage. If you receive any of these calls, you are urged to call authorities right away. Online scams come at all times of the year. Armstrong is here to help and we cover Safe Surfing and Phishing on FollowTheWire quite often. Online and phone scams can often come together. Earlier this year news reports showed individuals had received calls from scammers claiming to be with Microsoft, asking for remote access to their computer in order to remove a virus. Scammers also wanted credit card information to charge for this service, when in fact there was no virus and they were obviously not from Microsoft. No matter who the call is supposedly coming from, this is certainly a scam. We want to remind you that Armstrong will never ask you for your personal or financial information by email or phone.  Also, all Armstrong email campaigns are conducted in house.  We also do not use third parties to send email to our customers. If you happen to receive a suspicious email, please forward it to abuse@zoominternet.net.  Armstrong’s network engineers will review every submission and take appropriate steps to safeguard you, our customers. Please have a safe, happy and scam-free Holiday!