Important: Updated COVID-19 vaccines are now available to provide increased protection against the currently circulating Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants.
If it has been at least 2 months since you completed your COVID-19 primary series or had your last booster, then you are eligible for an updatedvaccine.
As with other diseases, you’re protected best from COVID-19 when you stay up to date with the recommended vaccines. COVID-19 vaccines are effective at protecting people from getting seriously ill.
Symptoms can be subtle, but that doesn’t mean they’re any less dangerous
Despite its depiction in the movies, a heart attack doesn’t always produce pain or pressure so intense it causes a person to clutch their chest and collapse to the floor. Most people who have a heart attack experience a much less dramatic version. And some have no symptoms at all — or symptoms that are so subtle they’re mistaken for something else entirely.
These so-called silent heart attacks account for about 20 percent of all heart attacks, according to 2022 statistics from the American Heart Association. Some experts estimate that percentage is even higher — closer to 50 percent.
What is a silent heart attack?
A heart attack happens when the arteries that carry blood to the heart become blocked, thereby depriving the heart muscle of oxygen and nutrients. If a person having a heart attack feels pain or pressure, it’s because of this blockage, says Eduardo Marban, M.D., executive director of the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
The same thing happens during a silent heart attack — blocked arteries make it so that oxygen-rich blood can’t reach the heart. The only difference is the problem goes unnoticed. “It’s not necessarily that there were no symptoms; it may just be that the patient didn’t recognize them as heart symptoms and wasn’t concerned,” Marban says.
Symptoms of a silent heart attack
Few people actually exhibit no symptoms. But signs of a heart attack can be muted or confused with other conditions. Here’s what to look out for:
Shortness of breath
Weakness or fatigue
A general feeling of unease or discomfort
Sweating
Nausea or vomiting
Lightheadedness or dizziness
Mild pain in the throat or chest
Pain in the back or arms, like a sprained or pulled muscle
For example, it’s not uncommon for silent heart attacks to be written off as indigestion, a sprained or strained muscle, fatigue or “just feeling run-down,” Marban says.
People who later realize they’ve had a silent heart attack may also recall experiencing shortness of breath at the time, or a general state of discomfort that led to a night of lost sleep, says Robert Lager, M.D., an interventional cardiologist at MedStar Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C. Nausea, sweating, dizziness and an overall feeling of unease are also signs of a silent heart attack.
If you experience any of these symptoms, “don’t sit around and wonder” what could be wrong. “Time is muscle,” Lager says, referring to the damage that decreased blood flow can inflict on the heart. “The longer one waits to get evaluated, the more likely that there will be irreversible damage.”
That said, some people truly experience no symptoms — understated or otherwise — when they have a heart attack. Diabetics who have nerve issues that interfere with pain signals (called neuropathy), for example, are at higher risk for having a literal silent heart attack, Lager says. Women and older adults are also more likely to have an event without warning signs.
Is it a heart attack … or something else?
Silent heart attacks don’t just fool patients; they can be misdiagnosed in health care settings too. Shortness of breath may be mistaken for a pulmonary problem, for instance. And pain in the shoulder or arm can be misdiagnosed as an orthopedic issue. “So there are lots of different forms of symptoms that are referred pain from the heart that can be very confusing and sometimes can be misleading,” Lager says.
One way to tell if the symptoms you’re experiencing are due to a heart attack or another condition is to know that the warning signs of heart trouble are “not positional,” Lager says. This means that the sprain-like pain in your neck and arm won’t get better if you stretch it or shake it out. And shortness of breath or sweating won’t subside if you take it easy and lie down.
“That’s a really good rule of thumb,” Lager says. “If you’re not sure if you’re having a symptom, see if you can manipulate it in some way. Can you press on the chest? Can you change your position? Can you stand up or sit down? Does it make a difference, positionally? Because the heart has no gyroscope; it doesn’t know where it is in space. And it doesn’t matter if you put the heart upside down or right side up, it’s going to give you the same signals if it’s in trouble.”
Another thing to keep in mind: Any symptom that results from the loss of oxygen to the heart will generally get worse if you increase demand on the heart. “So if someone has chest discomfort at rest and gets up and walks around, you’re increasing the heart’s demand for oxygen, so the symptoms usually will get worse if it’s a heart issue,” Lager says.
The risks factors for silent heart attacks are the same as those for a heart attack with symptoms. The most common include:
Age (for men, 45 and older; for women, 55 and older)
Diabetes
Excess weight
High blood pressure
High cholesterol
Lack of exercise
Prior heart attack
Tobacco use
A family history of heart disease
The dangers of having a heart attack and not knowing
Many people who have had a silent heart attack find out about it after the fact — sometimes months or years later — usually during a routine electrocardiogram, or EKG. Symptoms that arise afterward can also bring patients in to see a health care provider. Lager says people who have suffered a silent heart attack may notice a faster heart rate or increased exercise intolerance, for example.
Usually when someone finds out they’ve had a silent heart attack, the damage has already been done. But identifying a past heart attack can help you and your doctor mitigate risks for future cardiac events. After all, a silent heart attack is associated with an increased risk of heart failure, a 2018 study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found. It just needs to be on the name of the journal.. It also increases the likelihood of sudden death, stroke and having another heart attack.
Dangerous heart arrhythmias are another concern your doctor may monitor for if you had an undetected heart attack in the past. These can develop when parts of the heart muscle are scarred from the loss of blood. And another worry: Because “our blood gets thicker under stress,” Lager says, blood clots are also more likely to crop up after you’ve had a heart attack.
“Once the diagnosis is made, either of a recognized heart attack or a silent heart attack, everything is put into a higher risk category in terms of the complications that can ensue,” Marban says. “So it’s not something that we should just consider a curiosity and do nothing about. … Detecting a heart attack and acknowledging it is the first step towards putting the patient back on the kind of effective therapy that we know is helpful.”
Don’t ignore out-of-the-blue issues
The take-home message, Lager says, is to pay attention to a change in patterns in your body.
“If you’re someone who occasionally has some chest discomfort that’s mild, transient and occurs in certain predictable patterns, then it’s not nearly the same as someone who has new symptoms never felt before,” he says.
And if you’re prone to indigestion and just ate a spicy meal, the burning feeling in your chest is likely heartburn. But if it comes on out of the blue and the symptoms get worse, especially as you walk around or exercise, “that’s a real warning sign that it’s not gastrointestinal,” Lager says.
With 228 million licensed drivers in the United States, nearly all of us will interact with our state’s Department of Motor Vehicles, or DMV (although your state may call it something different). Unfortunately, government impostor scammers know this and are shifting DMV scams into high gear for their own financial benefit.
How It Works •A text message from your state’s DMV requests payment for an overdue fee and threatens license suspension if you do not pay immediately.•Alternatively, the message may say you are due for a refund from an overpayment or — this is especially timely — it may say you are entitled to a fuel rebate to offset high gas prices.•A web search for your state DMV lands you on what you think is your state’s official DMV site. What You Should Know •In some states, DMVs do send text messages, but only to consumers who have signed up to receive them.•At any rate, government agencies, including the DMV, will not ask for personal or private data by text message.•Criminals buy online ads to lead web searchers to fake DMV pages with the goal of capturing a payment method or sensitive data that can be used for identity fraud. What You Should Do •Carefully scrutinize DMV text messages for misspellings or unusual grammar.•Avoid clicking any links in an unsolicited text message or email, even if it claims to be a government agency.•Know your state motor vehicle office’s correct name. Crooks often use the generic “DMV” in scam messages, even in states with different agency names, such as Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles or Illinois’ Department of Driver Services.•Confirm that a DMV website is genuine by looking for a .gov suffix in the address, which every state motor vehicle agency uses (except for Wyoming).•Report DMV scams to the Federal Trade Commission, online or by calling 877-382-4357, and to your state’s consumer protection office.
What could be causing your fatigue — and how to fight it
David Levine feels tired — a lot — and laments how he rarely makes it to the end of a movie. The 68-year-old Manhattan journalist has a pretty good idea why: A night in the sleep lab showed he had borderline sleep apnea. “But certain medications I take, especially Lipitor, make me even more tired,” he says. “I went off it for two months, and I felt a lot better.”
Levine is in good company. Research suggests that fatigue (or anergia, in medical lingo) runs as high as 50 percent in people 65 and older, compared with rates in the general population, which range from 10 to 25 percent.
Yet “fatigue is not a natural consequence of aging,” says Barbara Resnick, codirector of the Biology and Behavior Across the Lifespan Organized Research Center at the University of Maryland School of Nursing. “It’s more related to the changes that occur due to age and commonly associated diseases.”
Fatigue is common when you’re fighting any kind of illness, from infections to autoimmune disorders. Some treatments, such as chemotherapy, are notoriously exhausting. And, of course, fatigue is also a symptom of COVID-19, although it’s usually accompanied by more telling signs like fever and chills, even in minor cases of the disease caused by the coronavirus.
Beyond that, “all of us feel tired some of the time,” says Suzanne Salamon, M.D., assistant professor of geriatric medicine and primary care at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. “Usually, it goes away, either with sleep or time.”
But if unexplained fatigue continues for more than a few weeks, it’s time to figure out what’s causing it. Here are some of the likely suspects (keep in mind, though, that more than one culprit may be responsible).
1. Your medications are sapping your energy
“Older adults take a lot of medications, and a lot of those medications tend to make people feel tired,” explains Brenda Windemuth, director of the Adult Gerontology Primary Care Nurse Practitioner Program at the University of Maryland School of Nursing. Chief among these: certain antidepressants, antianxiety drugs, sedatives, antihistamines, steroids, and blood pressure and cholesterol medications.
Antipsychotics, pain meds, seizure drugs and chemotherapy also stir up trouble. Others, like diuretics, contribute to exhaustion by disturbing your sleep.
“Not all drugs cause the same effects in all people,” Salamon says. “If a person has started a new medicine and they notice fatigue, they should report this to the doctor. Sometimes just moving the drug to the evening or lowering the dose can help, but sometimes you need to change to a different medicine.” She recommends always bringing all your medicines — prescription and over the counter — to your office visits so your doctor can check doses and duplicates.
Levine was able to take a lower dose of his cholesterol drug and still get its benefits. Although he still feels somewhat tired, he’s decided to stay on it. “The trade-off is worth it,” he says. “I’m a tennis player and I don’t want to drop dead on the court.”
2. Your sleep hygiene may need improvement
Many of us simply aren’t getting enough slumber and are paying the price the next day.
Poor sleep habits are often to blame. If you’re lying in bed and can’t fall asleep, Resnick advises, get up and do something until you feel tired, and then go back and try again. “The other really big mistake people make is that they expect to lie around all day and then be able to sleep at night,” she observes. “You only want to spend time in bed when it’s sleep time. Some people like to control the world from their bed.”
Other advice: Maintain a regular sleep pattern, and avoid alcohol at night. Consider keeping a sleep diary to help you identify factors — foods, drinks, medicines — that may be keeping you from solid slumber. Keep in mind that as you get older you may not require the seven to nine hours you used to, Windemuth says.
Obstructive sleep apnea is another culprit. Patients experience as many as 30 awakenings an hour when the soft tissues of the throat relax and obstruct the airway during sleep; as a result, they feel exhausted the next day.
Loud snoring is a clue. Spending the night in a sleep lab can confirm the diagnosis. The standard treatment, a continuous positive air pressure (CPAP) machine, involves wearing a mask over the nose to force air into the throat and keep the airways open.
3. You’re missing key nutrients
People over 50 are more likely to experience nutrient deficiencies — especially vitamins B12 and D, iron and folic acid — that cause fatigue. If your doctor suspects a deficiency, she’ll send you for a blood test, and you may need a supplement.
4. You’re anemic
This means that your blood has too few red cells or those cells have too little hemoglobin, which transports oxygen through the bloodstream. The result: fatigue.
A simple blood test provides a diagnosis, after which your physician will investigate possible reasons for the anemia and may put you on iron pills.
There are three main reasons older adults become anemic. Kidney disease is one. If your kidneys are not working properly, they may not be able to help your body make the red blood cells it needs. “It can also be due to blood loss from somewhere, usually along the gastrointestinal tract,” Resnick says, “or it’s in the bone marrow, which could be due to a malignancy.”
5. You have a heart or pulmonary problem
Cardiac issues — including heart failure, coronary artery disease, valvular heart disease, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) — are among the most common causes of fatigue in older people.
Heart disease can cause the heart to pump blood less efficiently and fluid to build up in the lungs. This, in turn, results in shortness of breath and less oxygen supply to the heart and lungs. So be sure to follow doctor’s orders when it comes to treatment.
6. You’re anxious or depressed
“Depression, being alone and other psychosocial issues are a huge factor in older people,” Windemuth says. “People are losing friends and spouses. They’re being uprooted from their homes or going into assisted living. That can lead to fatigue.”
Antidepressant medications are sometimes the answer. “We also encourage people to go out, become more involved and find things that they really enjoy doing,” Windemuth adds.
Paradoxically, exercise can make a huge difference. “The best thing for fatigue is physical activity — no matter what the underlying problem,” Resnick says. “The goal should be 30 minutes daily of moderate-level activity.”
Playing tennis has been a lifesaver for Levine, helping him to keep up his energy level. “If I exercise in the afternoon, I feel better,” he says.
7. COVID could be the Culprit
When COVID-19 symptoms linger long after a person’s initial illness, fatigue is a very common complaint. “Estimates of the prevalence are variable but some sources suggest that more than 50 percent of all COVID survivors are affected by persistent fatigue,” says John Baratta, M.D., founder and codirector of the UNC COVID Recovery Clinic at UNC Health in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. “In our Long COVID clinic, over 90 percent are troubled by this symptom.”
Before treating the fatigue, doctors first investigate other potential factors that may be contributing to extreme tiredness, such as sleep apnea, depression and chronic pain, says Benjamin Abramoff, M.D., head of the Post-COVID Assessment and Recovery Clinic at Penn Medicine in Philadelphia. Then you may be prescribed physical therapy or a graded exercise program, where the duration and intensity of activity is gradually increased. Both can improve stamina, but it’s important to pace yourself to avoid exacerbating symptoms or risking relapse, Baratta says.
“We have also found benefits from certain medications, such as antidepressants and stimulants, in certain situations,” Baratta adds. These include certain antidepressants in the SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) class and stimulants like those used to treat attention deficit disorder.
If you’re suffering from fatigue related to long COVID, ask your doctor about such strategies or consider making an appointment at a post-COVID clinic. These programs typically take a multidisciplinary approach to treating the disease’s lasting symptoms, fatigue included.
Heat waves are dangerous to everyone, but they pose an even greater risk to older adults. Here’s how to stay safe on hot summer days.
Much of the country has been steeped in heat this month; while the South and Central regions have already seen temperatures in the triple digits, the Northeast is bracing for its own sweatfest. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu declared a heat emergency through Thursday, and officials have established cooling centers around the city as temperatures were expected to surpass 100. The whole of Arkansas, too, was expected to exceed 100 degrees, with the National Weather Service tweeting out a warning to state residents: “Wednesday will be another brutal day with very hot temperatures and dangerous heat index values. Stay safe out there.”
Meanwhile, those hoping to escape the heat wave by vacationing abroad have been out of luck. Europe is also baking, with England experiencing an unprecedented 104 degrees Fahrenheit this week, a wild jump from its average July high of about 70 F. Britain’s weather office issued a red warning, its most severe, for when “illness and death may occur among the fit and healthy, and not just in high-risk groups.”
Take those warnings seriously: Steamy temperatures can kill.
When the heat dome descended on the Pacific Northwest last summer, Washington state had 100 heat-related deaths between June 26 and July 2, according to the state’s Department of Health, which noted that those were only confirmed cases: “We are not reporting probable heat-related deaths.” On June 28, 2021, alone 1,090 people in the Northwest U.S. visited emergency departments for heat-related illnesses (hyperthermia), the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention reports.
Older people are particularly at risk for hyperthermia during periods of extreme heat, the National Institutes of Health warns, due to factors such as poor blood circulation and reduced sweating (sometimes caused by medications for age-related illnesses).
Everyone should know about such dangers when summer weather starts scorching.
Dehydration
We are quite literally what we drink. Our bodies are mostly (about 60 percent) water, and we can’t live more than a few days without it. There is no universally accepted rule of thumb for how much, exactly, each of us should drink, despite how often we’ve been told to consume eight 8-ounce glasses a day, or 64 ounces total. The National Academy of Medicine recommends that adult men drink about 15 cups (125 ounces) of fluid a day and women 11 cups (91 ounces), but experts say the ideal amount can vary widely depending on factors including a person’s weight, health and activity level.
By the time you’re thirsty, you’re likely to have lost around 1 or 2 percent of your body’s fluid, so a key measure of dehydration is thirst. But this warning system doesn’t always function well in older adults, says Kumar Dharmarajan, a geriatrician and chief scientific officer at San Francisco–based insurer Clover Health, who explains that as people age they are less able to perceive their own thirst, “so when they need water, they’re less likely to respond to it.”
How to tell if you’re dehydrated In addition to thirst, your urine color can indicate dehydration. When urine is dark, it’s a sign that it is more concentrated due to less fluid in your body. “It should look more like lemonade, less like apple juice,” says Luke Belval, director of research at the University of Connecticut’s Korey Stringer Institute, which focuses on safety in sports. “We’re shooting for that pale, straw-colored urine.”
Another self-evaluation Belval recommends: Weigh yourself every morning. If you find that you’ve lost a pound or two from the day before, you are probably dehydrated — apologies to dieters — “because, in general, gross changes in body mass don’t happen that quickly.”
Signs of more severe dehydration can include a dry mouth, headache, decreased urine output, increased pulse, lack of sweat, irritability, and feeling fatigued, nauseous, lightheaded or dizzy.
How to prevent dehydration Drink frequently throughout the day. “Rather than wait until you feel bad and drink a ton of fluid, it’s better to maintain your hydration by drinking regularly,” advises Raj Deu, M.D., assistant professor of orthopedic surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
One thing preventing some people from drinking enough water, of course, is not having easy access to a bathroom. “Often they will restrict how much they drink and end up being dehydrated,” Deu observes. It can be a big problem for athletes, who may not be able to take bathroom breaks during practice or games, as well as for older men, who already may find that they need to urinate more frequently (a common issue as the prostate enlarges with age). “If you throw in drinking a ton of fluid, they’re going to be running to the bathroom an awful lot,” he says.
There’s no great solution when bathrooms are scarce, Deu adds, but his best advice would be to try to maintain a steady hydration level, rather than drink a large amount of liquid at once.
Experts also recommend avoiding alcohol, which is dehydrating, and being careful with caffeine, a mild diuretic, which means it causes you to eliminate an increased amount of fluid from your body.
And, yes, it is possible to drink too much water. Hyponatremia occurs when you drink so much fluid that you dilute the sodium level in your blood, which can lead to severe medical problems or death. But it’s rare, being associated most often with marathon runners who guzzle water repeatedly along their route without periodically urinating.
Heat Exhaustion and Heatstroke
Heat can make you sick — and can quickly become life-threatening. The milder problem is heat exhaustion, which occurs when your internal body temperature begins rising too high. You may experience sudden fatigue and dizziness as your blood pressure rises, and some people experience a change in mood — symptoms that shouldn’t be taken lightly but that can usually be addressed without medical intervention.
The University of Connecticut’s Belval says, “Generally, if you bring the person into the shade, elevate their legs and give them some water to drink, they recover pretty quickly.” (Elevating the individual’s legs helps blood pressure to normalize.)
Heatstroke, however, is a true medical emergency, and if not treated quickly, it can lead to death. It’s heatstroke when a person’s body temperature gets so high — typically more than 104.5 or 105 degrees — that the organs shut down and the person can become unconscious. If you’re assisting someone in this situation, call 911, Belval says, and “cool the person down as quickly as possible, covering their body with as much ice water as you can.”
Heatstroke can occur in high heat with heavy exertion (a 30-year-old man running a race in New York state in the heat reportedly died after his body temperature reached 108 degrees) or more gradually, after days spent in a hot environment — for example, someone who’s stuck at home alone without air-conditioning during a heat wave.
Along with, and partly because of, their higher risk of dehydration, older people are more susceptible to such heat-related illnesses, Dharmarajan explains. Older adults don’t sweat as easily as younger people and are “less able to dilate the blood vessels in their skin to emit heat from their bodies” to cool themselves down.
Older people also may have medical conditions or be taking medications (such as diuretics) that can impair a body’s ability to regulate heat, says Dharmarajan: “It sort of can be like a double whammy because the medication is pushing the body in one direction but so is the sun and the heat.”
How to prevent heat-related illnesses
Wear light, loose-fitting clothing that allows the body to breathe.
Drink plenty of water, and avoid alcohol and caffeine. If you’re going to be exercising in the heat, sip water throughout your workout and consider bringing a damp towel packed in ice to cool yourself off.
Spend as much time as possible in air-conditioned spaces. If you don’t have air-conditioning at home, go to cool public places like libraries. “A fan isn’t going to cut it if it’s really hot,”
Stay out of middle-of-the-day heat and use sunscreen; sunburn can cause dehydration and a diminished sweating response, says Belval.
As soon as you start feeling tired and short of breath, stop, rest and hydrate.
You’ve had it with relentless robocalls, the automated messages that at best are telemarketing and at worst are pitches from criminals who want to steal your cash or your identity.
Enough is enough with the deluge of unsolicited voice mails and the calls from phone numbers that look like they’re local but are spoofed (or disguised) by crooks who claim to be with the IRS or to have important information about your car warranty.
You’ve tried blocking numbers, to no avail. You’ve signed up on the National Do Not Call Registry. No difference. You’ve complained to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Nada.
Scam calls rebound from COVID crash
When the coronavirus pandemic erupted in early 2020, “we saw the first major drop in robocalls because call centers were closed, but now robocalls are exploding,” says Alex Quilici, CEO of YouMail, which develops robocall-blocking software.
Robocall volume in the U.S. hit an estimated 5.7 billion calls — an all-time high — in October 2019, then sank to about 3 billion a month in the spring of 2020, according to YouMail’s Robocall Index.
Spammers and scammers have since rebounded, with robocalls averaging 4.1 billion a month over the past year. That’s more than 1,500 calls per second.
“Having computers dialing a bunch of numbers is a fast, efficient and extremely cheap way to get to as many people as possible,” Quilici says, adding that scammers need only a tiny slice of call recipients to respond for their endeavors to pay off.
Some robocalls are legal
Amid the din, some robocalls are legitimate. Charities, pollsters and medical-service providers are among those who can legally autodial you. The American Red Cross can robocall you to ask for blood donations, for example, and your doctor’s office may do so to remind you of an appointment.
But when it comes to bad actors, keep in mind that mobile apps can beat them back. Also, importantly, the FCC now requires voice-service providers to implement call-authentication technology on the Internet Protocol (IP) portions of their networks.
The James Bond–sounding “STIR/SHAKEN” authentication enables providers to verify that the caller ID information transmitted matches the caller’s real phone number. This anti-spoofing step was mandated by the federal TRACED (Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence) Act, an AARP-endorsed measure signed into law at the end of 2019.
A united front
On the corporate side, the trade group USTelecom established the Industry Traceback Group to identify the sources of illegal robocalls and work with governments to “bring to justice individuals and entities responsible,” says Patrick Halley, USTelecom’s senior vice president of policy and advocacy.
The source of an illegal robocall — even one from outside the U.S. — often can be identified in 24 hours, Halley says. While billions of illegal and unwanted robocalls are still placed annually, fewer of them are reaching consumers, thanks to call-authentication, call-blocking and call-labeling tools that designate incoming calls as spam, he says.
For example, AT&T, the largest U.S. carrier, says it is blocking more than 1 billion robocalls a month.
Best practices for consumers
To join in the fight, consumers are urged to:
Download a call blocker. First, try a free solution to see if it does the trick. No-cost services from firms such as YouMail and Nomorobo are carrier-agnostic. (Nomorobo is free for landlines but $1.99 a month for cellphones.) Your mobile carrier has free tools, too.
Experiment with call-blocking tools, apps and options, to strike the right balance between the calls you want and those you don’t. It may take trial and error to avoid a “false positive,” the term for a legitimate call that is stopped.
Let a call go to voice mail if it gets through a robocall app and you don’t recognize the caller. If the caller claims to be from, say, Citibank, don’t call back a number left on voice mail. Use a number that you know is legitimate, such as one on a statement or credit card.
Hang up if it’s a live person calling, as computer-based robocall systems allow. Do not engage.
Learn what security tools your provider offers. See Help for consumers, below.
AT&T Call Protect blocks all known fraud calls outright, while suspected spam is labeled so users can choose whether to answer. The company says it blocks or labels about 1 billion robocalls a month.
For a fee, users can download an advanced version of the Call Protect app that includes caller ID and allows users to block, allow or send certain call types to voicemail.
The company’s fraud team uses machine learning to identify suspicious call patterns and prevent illegal calls.
AT&T uses automated scanning to identify and help block spam.
T-Mobile and Sprint cellular plans include Scam Shield, a free set of tools that alerts users when a call is likely a scam and blocks calls the network considers to be more serious threats.
Its plans now include free caller ID.
Customers receive a free “proxy telephone number,” a second number to give out when looking to keep one’s main number private.
Customers are allowed a free number change if their current one becomes a magnet for excessive spam calls.
Verizon says it has blocked more than 20 billion unwanted calls to date using tools such as Call Filter, a free app available to most customers that automatically blocks calls the company determines are likely fraudulent.
Call Filter Plus, which costs $2.99 a month, allows users to create a list of numbers to block. It also includes caller ID, access to a database of 100 million known spam callers, and a visual spam risk meter.
Verizon has created fake “honeypot” lines to track illegal robocall campaigns and notify law enforcement, says spokeswoman Kate Jay. As of late 2021, the lines had revealed more than 250,000 scams, Jay says.
•You stumble onto a travel booking site that offers exclusive vacation deals, often for far below market value.•You find a posting for a luxurious vacation rental listing at a lower-than-expected price.•Your rental car search lands you on what appears to be the jackpot — a site offering great prices on hard-to-find rental cars.•You’re using a popular vacation rental app, and the host asks you to pay upfront and through a means that is off the platform.
What You Should Know
•Scammers create bogus travel sites that often appear high up in search rankings (because they buy paid promotion) — the sites often even use the same language, colors and logos from legitimate sites.•Criminals create fake vacation rental listings that are often stolen from real listings and then altered — an unusually low price could be a sign that it’s not legitimate.•Shady rental car sites may appear like those of real companies, but the deals are fake — the thieves who set them up will simply take your money and then disappear.•A host that asks you to pay for your rental home outside of the app is most likely a scammer.
What You Should Do
•Be skeptical of any pitch that offers steep discounts on travel and accommodations.•Vet travel reservation sites before you book. Conduct a web search on the company name (along with the word “scam” or “complaint” or “review”) in search of other people’s experiences.•Pay for travel reservations and bookings with a credit card, which offers greater protections than other forms of payment.•When renting a car online, type in the web address versus using a search engine to reduce the chance of accidentally landing on a look-a-like site.•When using a vacation rental app, be suspicious if the host wants you to pay off-platform. For example, Airbnb only allows this for certain fees (e.g., local taxes), and Vrbo states that payments outside its checkout form are not eligible for its “Book With Confidence” guarantee.
Texts can be copied, screenshot, shared, and depending on the messaging system, may lack encryption or other stringent measures to keep everything private. Moreover, the contents may be inappropriate or misconstrued.
So what should you never include in a text? The answers aren’t always simple.
“From an etiquette perspective, it really depends,” says author and etiquette authority Lizzie Post, the great-great granddaughter of Emily Post and co-president of the Emily Post Institute. “To say, ‘Never’ for everything feels quite final, doesn’t it? And I am sure there are many different caveat situations out in the world.”
In no particular order, here are 13 things you should (almost) never put in a text, or at least consider before including them.
Would you want to read certain things in a message?
1. Don’t report a death. This is especially true if the deceased is someone close to the recipient. A text is no substitute for delivering devastating news face to face or over the phone.
There are exceptions, of course. If the recipient and person who has died have a bit more distance, it might be OK to pass along the news in a text, perhaps with details about memorial services. Apply common sense and consider how you would feel getting such news via text.
2. Don’t end a relationship. Breaking up with someone via text is harsh, cowardly, cold and inconsiderate. The dreaded phrase “It’s not you, it’s me,” might come off even worse in a text.
“I do think for the most part breakups should be over the phone or in person, as best they can be,” Post says. “At the same time, letting someone you’ve been on two Tinder dates with know that you’re not going to see them again is perfectly fine.”
3. Don’t express unrequited feelings of love, the flip side of No. 2. Don’t pour it on too thick, especially if your relationship is not exactly on solid ground.
4. Go easy on ALL CAPS. Sorry, but YOU’RE SHOUTING AND IT’S RUDE! If you’re really that angry, perhaps you should calm down before sending texts of any kind.
5. Avoid sarcasm. Beyond words, we usually can tell when people are being sarcastic in person by reading the expression on their faces and tone of their voices.
Absent the social cues, conveying sarcasm, or, for that matter, irony, is a lot more difficult in a text, even with visual aids such as smiley faces, winks, and the colorful pictures and symbols known as emojis that are meant to help you impart a certain mood or idea.
That old spelling tip about ‘assume’ applies
6. Understand emojis. Speaking of emojis, some may have a hidden meaning or slang. That eggplant emoji 🍆 probably isn’t really referring to the garden vegetable, nor is the peach 🍑 just Georgia’s favorite fruit. While we’re at it, this smiling swirl of brown 💩 isn’t soft-serve chocolate ice cream.
Avoid embarrassment and search Google to decode meanings of these and other emojis that are perhaps a bit spicier than what you have in mind. They’re frequently not G-rated.
7. Be wary of abbreviations. Most people know LOL as shorthand for “laughing out loud,” or “NP” for “no problem.” But TBH (to be honest), it could become a problem when you appear to be trying too hard, using abbreviations without much thought or fully understanding their intent. If so, don’t be surprised to get a response with SMH (shaking my head) or worse, STFU, which you’ll have to look up on your own.
8. Don’t write an opus. No one wants to read War and Peace as a text. Keep the message concise, so it is not answered with an TL;DR (too long, didn’t read).
9. Watch typos. “It” is different than “In,” and we all make mistakes texting on the fly. But if you’re communicating with an employer, client or customer, take an extra second to read the message before hitting Send. You don’t want to leave a sloppy impression.
That said, given the generally casual nature of texting, the traditional rules of punctuation often don’t apply. You can find plenty of chatter in social media about how adding a period at the end of a sentence within a text may come across as off-putting or negative.
10. Don’t complain about your boss. What did we tell you earlier about sending a text to the wrong person? If you value your job, assume your words can and will be used against you.
No texting ill of others, also true IRL (in real life)
11. Don’t spread gossip. A reprise: What did we just mention in No. 10? Whomever you’re gossiping about may see it, too.
12. Leave out personal data. Insecure texts should not include your birthdate, financial account numbers, passwords, Social Security number, and other personal details that crooks would be licking their chops to get at to spread malware or steal your identify.
13. Consider political ramifications. You’re passionate about political issues and may justifiably attempt to persuade friends to join your cause.
Just keep in mind that your views could go viral. If you have second thoughts about having your opinions splattered across social media or published somewhere for all to see, avoid putting them in a text.
In their never-ending pursuit of your money and identity, criminals are constantly coming up with new cons. Here’s a closer look at eight relatively new types of scams that are becoming more common, along with expert advice on avoiding them. Check out the list of today’s hottest emerging frauds.
1. Google Voice Scam
Let’s say you’ve posted a notice online — an item for sale, for example, or a plea to find a lost pet — and included your phone number. In this scam the crook will call you, feign interest, but say they want to verify first that you aren’t a scammer. They tell you that you are about to get a verification code from Google Voice (their virtual phone and text service) sent to you, and ask you to read it back. What’s really going on: They are setting up a Google Voice account in your name. “They can go on to perpetrate scams and pretend to be you, hiding their footprint from law enforcement,” says Eva Velasquez, CEO of the Identity Theft Resource Center.
How to stay safe: “Never share verification codes with anyone,” Velasquez says. If you have fallen for this scam, you’ll find steps to reclaim your account at the Google Voice Help Center.
2. Rental Assistance Cons
As eviction bans in cities and states expire, renters should be on the lookout for rental assistance scams, says Deborah Royster, assistant director at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Over 583,000 older adults were behind on their rent in mid-2021, opening the door for scammers to impersonate government or nonprofit employees and to request personal info and money up front for applications.
How to stay safe: Apply only to legit rental assistance programs run by government or nonprofit groups, Royster says. Find programs in your area at cfpb.gov.
3. Fake-Job Frauds
Scammers harvest contact info and personal details from résumés posted on legit job websites like Indeed, Monster and CareerBuilder. Then, pretending to be recruiters, they call, email, text or reach out on social media with high-salary or work-at-home job offers. Sometimes the goal is to get additional info about you; other times it’s to persuade you to send money for bogus home-office setups or fake fees.
How to stay safe: Use a separate email address just for job hunting, and set up a free Google Voice phone number that rings on your phone but keeps your real number private, says Alex Hamerstone, advisory solutions director for the information security company TrustedSec. If you get a sudden job offer, independently call the company’s human resources department to verify it is real, suggests Sandra Guile, spokeswoman for the International Association of Better Business Bureaus.
4. Fake Amazon Employees
One-third of business-impostor fraud complaints involve scammers claiming they’re from Amazon, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reports. Older adults are four times more likely to lose money and get hit harder — losing a median of $1,500, versus $814 for younger adults — in such scams. “Amazon is the biggest, best-known company in the [online sales] space,” Hamerstone says. So the impersonator scams “feel real” to people.
How to stay safe: Ignore calls, text messages, emails and social media messages about suspicious account activity, raffles or unauthorized purchases. If you think you may have a real account problem, contact Amazon customer support at 888-280-4331.
5. Cryptocurrency ATM Payments
Those ATMs cropping up in convenience stores, gas stations and big retailers are scammers’ newest payment method. Pretending to be government officials, utility agents or sweepstakes representatives, they direct you to pay a purported fee, bill or handling charge by sending cryptocurrency bought at these ATMs to an untraceable digital wallet. “It’s irreversible. There’s no way to get your money back,” says Lisa Cialino, an attorney with the New Jersey State Commission of Investigation.
How to stay safe: According to the FTC, “nobody from the government, law enforcement, a utility company or prize promoter will ever tell you to pay them with cryptocurrency. If someone does, it’s a scam, every time.”
6. Local Tax Impostors
Scammers are impersonating state, county and municipal law enforcement and tax collection agencies to get you to share sensitive personal information or send money to “settle your tax debt.” They may call, email or mail letters threatening to revoke your driver’s license or passport. Some pretend to offer state tax relief.
How to stay safe: Ignore any such calls and emails. Real tax agencies, from the IRS to your town tax collector, do business by mail and won’t ask you for passwords or bank account or credit card info. They also won’t threaten to call the police or ask you to pay with gift cards, peer-to-peer (P2P) payment apps or cryptocurrency.
7. ‘Favor for a Friend’ Gift Cards
You receive an email from a friend asking for a quick favor. She’s having trouble with a credit card or store account and, annoyingly, can’t buy a gift card she needs for a birthday present. Will you buy the card and call her with the numbers on the back? She’ll pay you back. But this favor’s really a fraud, as it’s almost always an impostor sending the request, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) warns. If you do as told, you’ll never see the money again because gift cards don’t have the protections that debit and credit cards have.
How to stay safe: Call or text your friend to confirm the person really needs the favor. Target, Google Play, Apple, eBay and Walmart were the top cards used by scammers in 2021. “Always double check before sending someone money,” the BBB advises.
8. P2P Payment Requests
Scammers are increasingly demanding payment via money-transfer apps like Venmo, Zelle and Cash App. It’s so convenient — you pay in seconds from your phone or computer. But these payments usually cannot be canceled.
How to stay safe: Only use P2P apps to send money to friends and family. And turn on the security-lock feature that requires entering a passcode to make a payment.
For many financial documents, just 3 years — for others, practically forever
You may be starting at a heap of paperwork when you finish filing your 2021 federal taxes, which are due April 18. Your first urge may be to sweep them all into a paper bag and put the bag under a stairwell. Don’t do that. Instead, keep only the records you need to keep. And that starts with sorting them out.
Try to stay tidy
Neat, complete, well-organized financial files speed the process of filing your tax return and can keep you from making errors. Maintaining some semblance of order after you’ve filed your return — rather than tossing it into a file cabinet or shoebox — will come in handy if the Internal Revenue Service has questions about your form.
“The biggest blunder is not being organized about what records ought to be kept,” says Neal Stern, CPA, a member of the American Institute of CPAs’ National CPA Financial Literacy Commission. “There are people who somehow believe that they should keep all of their paperwork, but they don’t think through what the important paperwork is that should be kept or how it should be kept or how it should be organized.”
People who keep too many financial papers often struggle just as much to find needed documents as those who don’t keep any files. “They end up having drawers full of old papers,” Stern says. “It’s not much better than not having the paperwork if you can’t figure out what you have and where it is.”
What to keep
For an individual tax return, you’ll need to save anything that supports the figures you entered on your return. You should keep the W-2 and 1099 forms you get from employers, for example, as well as any 1099-B or 1099-INT tax documents from banks, brokerages and other investment firms.
If you lost your job last year and received unemployment benefits from the government, be sure to keep your 1099-G form, which reports the amount you have received. The government is gave a tax exemption of up to $10,200 of unemployment income ($20,400 for married couples filing jointly) received in the 2020 tax year, but that exemption disappears for the 2021 tax year, so you’ll owe federal income taxes on the entire amount.
If you’re itemizing your deductions, keep receipts for these: credit card and other receipts, invoices, mileage logs and canceled checks. If you’ve bought or sold mutual fund shares, stocks or other securities, you’ll need confirmation slips (or brokerage statements) that say how much you paid for the investments and how much you received when you sold them. Keep a copy of all your investments for at least three years after you have sold them.
Similarly, if you’ve sold a home, you’ll need records that prove what you paid and what you received from its sale. And if you’ve sold a rental property, you’ll need detailed records of the amount you’ve invested in the property over the years, as well as how much you deducted for depreciation. It’s wise to keep Schedule E, the form you fill out every year for rental income, as long as you own the property.
How long to keep it
You’ve likely heard that seven years is the perfect period to hold on to tax records, including returns. The actual time to keep records isn’t that simple, according to Steven Packer, CPA, in the Tax Accounting Group at Duane Morris.
“In most cases, tax records don’t have to be kept for seven years because there’s a three-year statute of limitations,” Packer explains. “So assuming there’s no fraud or nothing else wrong, the IRS cannot look at your tax returns beyond that three-year statute.”
The statute of limitations has some important exceptions, and if your tax return has any of these, you’ll need to keep your returns and your records longer than three years. For example, the statute of limitations is six years if you have substantially underestimated your income. The threshold for substantial understatement is 25 percent of your gross income. If you claim your gross income was $50,000 and it was really $100,000, you’ve substantially understated your income.
The six-year rule also applies if you have substantially overstated the cost of property to minimize your taxable gain. Say if you sold a piece of property for $150,000 and claimed you paid $125,000 instead of the actual $50,000, the IRS has six years to take action against you. And if you have omitted more than $5,000 in income from an offshore account, the statute of limitations is also six years.
Keep records for seven years if you file a claim for a loss from worthless securities or bad-debt deduction. If you haven’t filed a return, or if you have filed a fraudulent return, there’s no statute of limitations for the IRS to seek charges against you.
Property records can be forever
When you sell a property at a profit, you’ll owe capital gains tax on that profit. Calculating your capital gain often requires you to hang on to your records as long as you own your investment. You’ll need those records to calculate the cost basis for the property, which is the actual cost, adjusted upward or downward by other factors, such as major improvements to the structure.
Calculating the cost basis on property you live in is relatively simple because most people can avoid paying capital gains tax on their primary residence. If you sell your primary residence, those filing individual returns can exclude up to $250,000 in gains from taxes, and couples filing jointly can exclude up to $500,000. You must have lived in your home for at least two of the past five years to qualify for the exclusion. Even so, you’ll need to save your records of the transaction for at least three years after selling the property.
If your sale doesn’t meet the above criteria, you’ll need to keep records of significant improvements for at least three years after the sale. IRS Publication 523, “Selling Your Home,” spells out what improvements you can add to your cost basis — and reduce your capital gains bill. The same holds true for rental property.
Most brokerages will compute your cost basis for stocks, bonds and mutual funds, although they are only to calculate your cost basis for stock transactions since 2011 and mutual funds since 2012. It’s a good idea to keep all your transaction records, however, in case you change brokers. Your broker is not obligated to hold your records indefinitely. In addition, keep records of any inherited property and its value when the owner died, which will become your tax basis.
There’s nothing wrong with saving your records longer than the legal limits if it gives you peace of mind and you can stand the clutter. You might consider storing some records in the cloud — remote computer storage space that you rent.
Although many people keep paper records, it’s also smart to have the documents converted to electronic files and stored in the cloud. It’s a good idea to have two sets, in case one is destroyed. Finally, remember that your state may have separate rules for keeping records; check with your accountant or state tax department.
