Are you tired of telemarketing calls and spam emails?  I am.

I’m even on the Do Not Call Registry but the calls just kept coming in.

Here lately, they just kept getting worse and worse.  On top of them just being annoying, then you have to worry about answering and being the victim of a scam.

The emails are even harder to catch sometimes.  They seem so legit so you really have to check what you are doing.

I know this is off topic from my regular blog posts but I felt maybe this will help some people out.

My husband called this morning to let me know his sister received a call from the “IRS” saying there was something wrong with her taxes.  It was a scam call.

This week, my dad got a company email from the IRS that I opened while not paying attention and clicked on a link.  When I looked and realized it was a scam, I had to go through the whole mess of scanning the computer and praying there was no virus.  I know I should’ve known better, but my dad had just downloaded a form from the IRS website and he thought it had something to do with that.  I just didn’t even think about it being a scam.

So what can you do?

I found that there are apps you can download on your phone to help catch some of the spam calls.  If it is known as spam, your phone won’t even ring.  If it’s potential spam, they will label it as such so you can choose to answer it or not.  You can also report is as spam, block the call, etc. right in the app.  Here are the apps that have good ratings and seem to be at the top of the list to use.

(Ahhh let’s go over some legal details just in case…I am not associated with any of these apps and cannot guarantee they will work for everyone.  I am recommending them based on personal research and my personal experience with one I downloaded and am currently using.  Download and use at your own risk.)

AT&T Call Protect

This is made for AT&T customers only.  I have this one downloaded on my phone and it is working great.  I was getting calls every day or so and now i’ve only gotten one in the past couple weeks.  It looks like it is made by the next app on the list called Hiya so i’m assuming they are both comparable to one another.

Hiya Caller ID and Block

Since my parents don’t have AT&T, I had them download this app.  It has been working for them, too.

Truecaller

This is one that I haven’t tried yet, but the ratings seem good.

Scam Emails

Like I said above, emails are a little trickier to figure out.  The best thing you can do if you have any question about the legitimacy of an email is to check where the email is coming from.  For instance, if you get an email that says it’s coming from a company name, actually click on the name to see if the email address matches up.

Ex.  Email states it’s coming from Apple.  When you click where it says “Apple” in the email address area, the email address is actually coming from [email protected]

That is obviously not a legit Apple email.

Big companies should have email addresses like: [email protected] or [email protected] or [email protected]

Another alert to a scam email is spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.

Have you had a telemarketing or email scam happen to you?  Feel free to comment below for more ideas of what to look for.