 I'm the Chief of Staff. The meeting is being recorded. I'm an attorney and I used to work in the Consumer Division and I oversee the Consumer Assistance Program. So this is a home turf for me. Krieger, I'm in the Public Protection Division and I do consumer protection as well as antitrust. I also teach at UVM. I teach about consumer protection law and privacy law and policy. So we are happy to be here to share some of our knowledge with you. We've tried to identify some of the most hot topics that we encounter to be useful to everybody when you're looking at issues of consumer protection. And what we're going to do is if you raise your hand using the Zoom tool, hand raise function we can call on you or you can ask questions at the end. We'll try to stop a little early in case anyone has any questions. And with that, I think I'll get started with our PowerPoint slides. So most of what this presentation will be will be you looking at a slideshow that we prepared. So I'll share them on the screen so that you can see that. And let's fingers cross today that I do this. So here we go. Let's begin. This is the list of topics we'll be covering today. This will be just some of that we've plucked out. We thought would be useful. Ryan will go over the basics on unfairness and deception and the private right of action under the Consumer Protection Act. So the private right of action being an action for you, a person as opposed to the state bringing a lawsuit. And then we've got a lot of items in the toolkit for basic but powerful protections. The three-day right to cancel, telemarketing sales rule, the prohibition on collecting on illegal loans, illegal debt collection practices, credit card fraud protection, key opt-outs like they do not call registry, and the ban on rental application fees. I will go over some basic identity theft issues and data security protections for you, freezing credit reports, two-factor authentication, and robo called walkers will touch on those things. We'll hear from Ryan on how to get what you want from a business without having to sue them, useful. And then I'll talk about scams, some of our hot scams from 2020 that we're aware of and came through our Consumer Assistance Program. And then I'll touch on the home improvement fraud topic, which is one of our most common complaints at the Consumer Assistance Program. And we'll close with some resources for you. So with that, Ryan, I'll turn it over to you and you can just tell me next slide when you want me to move ahead with the slides. Sure thing. Okay, great. So there we go. Yeah, why don't you go to the next slide. So the main law that we enforce in the Consumer Protection Division is what's called the Consumer Protection Act here in Vermont. And pretty much every state has a Consumer Protection Act, and it is very similar to a federal law called the Federal Trade Commission Act. And it very simply prohibits unfair or deceptive acts and practices. Now, this is a very powerful law. The first one was passed about 100 years ago by Congress. And the intent behind this law was we want to be able to make sure we have an honest marketplace. We want to make sure that people aren't going to be deceived. And before that, if someone hurt you in the marketplace, if someone ripped you off or whatever, you could sue them for breach of contract, or you could claim they've committed fraud. And these were kind of difficult things to prove. And the Consumer Protection Act actually makes it a lot easier to prove these things. All you have to show is that they were acting unfairly or deceptively. And very briefly, I'll tell you what that means when we go to the next slide. So unfairness is basically you show that they're engaged in an act that's likely to cause substantial injury that you can't avoid. And it's not outweighed by countervailing benefits. Now, we're not going to go too much into the legalities of this. But if someone really hurts you for a significant amount of money, maybe in real estate or a car or something like that, in case where you want to go and find a lawyer, you may want to remind them that the Consumer Protection Act is a very powerful protection that you have. Let's go to the next one. Deception is a really powerful one because basically if a business engages in deceptive behavior, and basically all deceptive behavior is behavior that's likely to mislead consumers. It doesn't even have to be a lie. It doesn't have to be a falsehood. It could be just something where they're just getting too clever with their language. The sort of thing that would cause people to make a weird mistake. For example, I just resolved a case involving a used car seller that had sent out one of those glossy cards that you've probably gotten in the mail. And it had a scratch-off contest with it. And in big letters, it said you could win a television or you could win a car and all these big prizes. And in teeny, tiny, tiny, tiny print, it said basically whatever you win, you're probably going to get a $5 Walmart gift card. And that's what everybody got. Now, if we were looking at this from a contract standpoint or a fraud standpoint, someone might say, well, you know, technically in that teeny, tiny print, they were technically honest, but that's not the standard on deception. The standard is, was it likely to mislead? And it was likely to mislead, and it did mislead a number of people, and it caused them to go to the auto dealership when they otherwise probably would not have gone there. So deception is a much easier thing to prove. So that's something we want to emphasize to you. Why don't we go to the next slide? Let's move on to the next one. Keep going. Okay. So when there is a Consumer Protection Act violation, if you see someone engaging in deceptive advertising or deceptive acts or doing something that you think is just a bad act, just something that you think is unfair, you have a couple options. You can call the Consumer Assistance Program and complain about it. And that will inform us at the AG's office that something is going on, and we might look into it. And when we sue under the Consumer Protection Act, we can see penalties of up to $10,000 per violation. And each violation is usually each consumer that may have been deceived. So we can seek some pretty big penalties for Consumer Protection Act violations. If you personally have been harmed by a deceptive act and it's of the amount that you feel like you may want to sue, you can sue for damages, which is to say how much money you lost because of the deception. You can get your attorney's fees back because lawsuits are expensive. But importantly, and this is a very powerful tool, if the actor was really, really bad, they did something that a court would say, wow, that was really egregious behavior. They might assign what are called, quote, exemplary damages. And it's up to three times consideration. Consideration is what you paid for the thing. So in other words, if you go into a store and you buy a television for $1,000, and they tell you that this TV has all of these, it's got 15 HDMI ports and all these other great things, and you get it home, and none of that is true. It's a complete lie. Then your damages would be, this thing is only worth $400, I paid $1,000, my damages are $600. But if you can show that they were a really bad actor, you might be able to get three times the $1,000 you paid $3,000. That's a really big damages. I'm not suggesting that's easy to do or that a judge is very likely to give that. But what is important about this act is that as we're going to get into later about getting businesses to do what you want, it's often not about suing a business to get money. It's about showing them that they've done something very wrong, and that because they've done something very wrong, there could be a lot of exposure for them. And therefore, why don't they just do the right thing, make it right for you, and you get the relief that you're looking for. It's not about pulling people into court. It's about showing them why they've done something wrong, and they have exposure to a lot of liability. And therefore, they should give you your money back or whatever result you want. Let's go on to the next slide. Sorry, Ryan, I'm having... That's okay. So next, what we're going to go to is within... We are always going to the legislature, and the Federal Trade Commission is always going to Congress and trying to get them to pass laws to give you the consumers better protections. Now, the problem is that often you, the consumer, don't know these protections exist. And if you don't know they exist, you can't really take advantage of them. So what we thought we'd do is tell you about some of the more prominent and really useful protections that exist for you. So the first one, and this is a really big one, it's a huge protection. It's called the three-day right to cancel. Let's go to the next slide. And basically, what it means is that if you get a phone call and someone sells you something over the phone or someone comes to your door and sells you something, door-to-door sales isn't really a big thing anymore, but if someone did that or if you... This is a law that applies to any sort of kind of fly-by-nighty sort of operation. A phone solicitation, door-to-door, maybe you go to a convention and there's someone set up in a hotel room selling stuff or in a lobby. It applies at colleges, like sometimes sellers show up in pop-up booths and things like that. Basically, if you buy something from in any of those circumstances, you are allowed to cancel the purchase within three days and get your money back. Okay, that is a very powerful protection. So if someone calls you on the phone and high-pressure sales you into buying something that... Because this is what they do is they use high-pressure sales. They say this is a limited time offer, act now. You might feel pressured into doing it. And then after sleeping on it, you might say, well, that was really dumb. I didn't really need that thing. I didn't really want it. What can I do now? Well, you can contact the seller and say, I want my money back. I am invoking the three-day right to cancel. And they have to give you your money back. Okay, so let's look a little bit more deeper into how that works. Let's move on to the next slide. Sorry about that. It's my dog in the background. Sorry. When I mute myself for some reason, I can't advance the slide. So I'll leave myself. So the cooling off requirements apply if a purchase is done at your home, in a buyer's workplace, hotel room, convention center, fairgrounds, restaurant, dorm. Okay. So basically, any place that is not a storefront could be applicable to the cooling off rules. There's specific carve-outs. It doesn't apply to arts and crafts that you might buy at a farmer's market or an affair. And it doesn't apply to motor sales. So sometimes, you know, auto dealers will sell cars at, you know, a remote location. It doesn't apply to those kinds of sales, but otherwise it applies. And there is a similar cooling off rules having to do with property. Anytime you engage in a contract that involves your property, taking out a home equity loan, refinancing, taking out a mortgage, you know, maybe someone, you know, sales person convinces you to, you know, borrow against the equity of your home for some deal, you have three days to cancel that deal. So that applies anywhere. Anytime there is a transaction that involves your home, you have three days right to cancel. So that's a big one. Let's go to the next slide. There are some, some caps. So the federal law only applies to purchases of $25 or more at a residence or $130 or more. Otherwise Vermont has a stronger law. So in Vermont, it's a $25 or more. If you don't have to sign anything, otherwise any purchase over $5, you can refund it within three days. So very powerful rule. Next. Okay. So how does it work? You can rescind the offer by the third business day, midnight of the third business day. Then the seller has to give you your money back within 10 days. Unless Regulation Z, that's the mortgage one. That's 20 days. And then if the seller has already provided you like, I don't know, sold you a set of encyclopedias or something like that, they have to come by within 20 days and pick up their encyclopedias and take them away. Let's go on to the next one. Okay. Now here is something which is really powerful. So you might say to yourself, okay, so you're telling me that if someone sells me something, and I have second thoughts, I can get my money back. But how does that work exactly? They are supposed to give you a cancellation form. And it is a very specific form. The law says exactly how it has to be. It has to be in 10 point bold face font. Okay. They have to provide you a notice of cancellation. They have to provide you a form that you can send to them to tell them you're canceling. And they have to tell you about it. They have to put it on the receipt and they have to give you a form. And here is the key thing. If they don't give you that form, the three days don't start running until they've given you the form. So that means if you get a really scammy business that sells you something and doesn't give you any of those mornings, it doesn't give you any of those forms, then you can cancel it pretty much any time. Because the three days starts when they give you the form and they haven't given you the form. So that means it's a more than three day right to cancel. It's a, you get to have your money back. That's really powerful. Okay. That's something you should know about. Next. This is actually in the statute. It says exactly what the cancellation form should say. Let's go on to the next one. Okay. Don't worry about that next slide. Okay. Before we go on to the telemarketing sales rule, I think we may be touching on this later, but it's worth mentioning in the cooling off rule. We'll mention it a little bit later. Another big protection you have is if you buy something via credit card. Okay. If you send something back to the scammy business and they won't give you back your money, even though legally they have to, right? So what are you going to do? You're going to call the consumer assistance program and complain about them, but you can also contact your credit card and tell them that a fraudulent transaction was made and you want to reverse the charge. And the credit card company has to reverse your charge. Now they're going to investigate it possibly and make a determination, but under federal law, you have protections if you use a credit card. Okay. So that's really important as well. Okay. Let's go on to the next one. So the telemarketing sales rule is another powerful law. This is a federal law, but we get to enforce it at the state here too. And what it does is it restricts certain telemarketing practices. It creates what's called the do not call registry. The do not call registry is a federal list that you can put your phone number on. And if you put your phone number on it, telemarketers are not allowed to call you. Now I know what you're probably thinking right now. You're probably thinking, what about the five calls a day I get telling me that my auto lease is up or that the bank is calling because of fraud and you're talking about robo calls. Okay. Robo calls are a huge problem. Charity is going to be talking about robo calls later on. This is a law that applies to legitimate law-abiding telemarketers and there are law-abiding telemarketers out there who comply with the telemarketing sales rule. Let's go on to the next. And they're not allowed to give you robo calls unless you give them written permission. That's why all these guys who are sending you robo calls without you asking, they're breaking the law. And the problem is the technology to stop them is difficult, but Charity may mention that we've actually had some success here in Vermont. So the telemarketing sales rule says the telemarketers can't call you before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m. So if a telemarketer does that, they're breaking the law. You can tell them that. You can tell them not to call you because they're breaking the law. They have to tell you who they are. They have to tell you material information about the goods and services. They're not allowed to lie. There's a lot of laws that prohibit them from lying. This is one of them. This is really important. It is illegal for a telemarketer to ask you to pay via wire transfer money, Graham or Western Union. Okay. Um, this is the, if you take nothing else away from this, from this lesson, from this class, here's something you need to know. If someone calls you up and offers you any sort of deal that involves a cash transfer, that is a scammer. They are trying to rip you off. No legitimate business contacts you and asks you to wire money. If they ask you to pay with a, with a gift card and Amazon gift card or some other kind of gift card, that is a scam. A charity will probably cover this again, but it's worth repeating that is a scam and they're trying to rip you off. Okay. It's actually illegal for telemarketers to ask for cash and anyone who tries to do a cash money transfer by phone or email or whatever, it's a ripoff. Okay. Let's go on to the next slide. Okay. So the national do not call registry is a registry which you put your phone number on. The telemarketers have to check it every 31 days and remove any phone numbers that are on the list. Now this does not apply to political organizations, charities and telephone surveyors. It also doesn't apply to companies with a quote established relationship. So some companies will, you know, try to ask you to fill out a survey or, you know, offer you a gift card or something just to get that relationship because then they can ignore the do not call registry and call you directly. Okay. The registration does not expire if you see an email saying, hey, you need to go back and re-register because, you know, it's expired. That is a scam. Okay. Let's go on to the next one. Okay. Let's talk a little bit about illegal debt collection. This, you know, this is a big one. Often, you know, despite our best efforts, we end up owing money. And sometimes, you know, what happens is the folks who have lent you money, they try to collect the money from you. And if they can't, they will either hire a debt collection agency or they will assign the debt to a debt collector. Debt collectors just buy this debt and then they try to collect on it themselves. But there are protections that you have in the debt collection area. So let's talk a little bit about that. Okay. So the first thing that you should know, and don't worry too much about what's on this slide, let's actually go to the next slide. Yeah. So the first thing you need to know is that it is illegal to collect an illegally made loan. Okay. What does that mean? Okay. What is it? Excuse me. My dog was barking at another dog and saw the window, saw the window. So we have a usury law here in Vermont, which is to say there is a maximum interest rate that you are allowed to be lent to act unless it's by a federal bank, basically. And that, that maximum amount for single payment loans is 18%. If it's an installment loan, you know, credit card or something like that, it's 24%. Now there are payday lenders out there. They operate on the web and they will, you know, they will offer you small money loans, $100 or $200 or $500. And you have to pay it back within a month or you will say, you know, you might owe $450 or something like that. But if you work out the interest on those, those loans ends up being thousands of percent in interest or hundreds of percent in interest. Those are you serious illegal loans. It is illegal in the state of Vermont to try to collect on those loans. What this means is if you, you know, you know, take money out from a payday loan from one of these illegal lenders that should not be operating in Vermont. You don't have to pay it back. That might sound crazy, but it's true because it's illegal for them to try to collect on it. This is a protection we put in because it can be very difficult to stop some of these payday lenders who operate on the web. So a protection we have here in Vermont is if they make the mistake of lending in Vermont illegally, then they're never going to be able to collect that money. Very powerful protection. Now how do you know if a lender is legitimate or not? You can go on the Department of Financial Regulation website and lenders in Vermont have to obtain a license from DFR and they list the licensees on their website. And if you do not see a lender on the DFR website, they should not be operating in Vermont. They are not allowed to. And that means if they give you a loan, that is an illegal loan. Okay. And they cannot collect on that loan. Okay. Let's go on to the next slide. Okay. So now let's talk about debt collection practices. Now, debt collection is legal. It is legitimate. And companies that lend money have a right to try to collect that money from you. However, in the past, some debt collectors have gotten a little bit too aggressive. And because of that, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act was passed. And what does that mean? Okay. What it means is that debt collectors are restricted in a lot of the things that they can do. They are not allowed to threaten violence against you. Okay. They are not allowed to publish a list of names of people who refuse to pay their debt. They can't use obscene or profane language. They cannot call you repeatedly. They're allowed to call you once in a day. Okay. They can't call you repeatedly during the day. If a debt collector is calling you and swearing at you or threatening you, they are breaking the law. And you should report them. You should contact the consumer assistance program. Okay. They're not allowed to lie to you. They're not allowed to falsely say that their attorneys or government representatives, they can't tell you that you've committed a crime by not paying back your loan. Not paying back a loan is not a crime. Okay. It might be a violation of a contract, but it's not a crime. They can't tell you that they work for a credit reporting company. They can't lie to you about how much money you owe. They can't tell you you're going to be arrested if you don't pay your debt. Remember, being in debt is not a crime. If you have a legal debt and you don't pay it and a debt collector goes to court, they can ask the court to garnish your wages. But they're not allowed to tell you that, you know, we'll start garnishing your wages tomorrow. If they have not gone through the proper legal actions. Okay. Let's see here. What else can they not do? They're not allowed to, they're not allowed to contact, you know, your friends, your friends and family. They're not allowed to call your boss. They're not allowed to harass you at work. Okay. So there's a lot. So basically, if there's a debt collector who is, you know, being too aggressive towards you, you may want to contact the consumer assistance program and see if your rights may have been violated there. Let's go on to the next thing. Okay. I mentioned this a little bit before. Let's talk about credit card protections. Let's go on to the next slide. So under federal law, the Fair Credit Billing Act, if you get a credit card statement, and there is a misstatement on it, there's a wrong amount charged, that's a billing error. You can contact your credit card and have them correct that and they have to correct it. If you receive defective goods, you don't have to pay for them. You can contact the credit card company and they will initiate what's called a chargeback and they will, you know, they will charge back to the company. Now I got to warn you, some companies, if you initiate a chargeback, they do not like that. They do not like that happening. So if it's a company that you do business with regularly, I would recommend you try to work it out with them before jumping to the credit card company. There are companies that might refuse to do business with you in the future if you do chargebacks on your credit card, but that doesn't mean they get to rip you off. Maybe you don't want to do business with a company that's, you know, trying to rip you off. Okay. So all you do is you call a credit card company, you say I got a defective good or have a fraudulent charge, and I would like to dispute the charge. Let's go on to the next one. Okay. There is another law, EFDA, and I'm blanking on the name. That is a law that applies to debit cards. So you have certain protections when you're talking about debit cards, but there are a lot more protections if you use credit cards. A lot of people say, you know, credit cards are dangerous, don't use credit cards. If you take out more money than you can afford to pay back in a month, then you can get into real trouble with credit cards. But if you pay your full amount every month, there are a lot of protections that come with using credit cards, and they can be really, really good for you if you use them responsibly. Okay. Let's move on to the next page. Okay. Opting out. So there are a lot of services out there that you can contact to kind of opt out of some of the more annoying things that you might interact with in the day to day. Let's go on to the next slide. So the telemarketing sales rule, the do not call list, that is at the website do not call.gov. Okay. There are companies that will pull, do soft hits on your credit report to see if you are a person of good credit so that they can sell you pre-screen credit card offers. You can opt out of those opt out pre-screen.com. If someone is sending you an email, you know, I go into my Gmail account and, you know, there's 20 emails and a lot of them are from companies that, you know, I might have done business with once years ago. And of course now I'm on a list and they're sending me and sending me and sending me. There is a law called can spam. I'm not going to tell you, I don't completely remember what it stands for but can spam. And it requires that every email at the bottom have an unsubscribe button. And if you find that link at the bottom, sometimes it says manager email preference and sometimes it says unsubscribe. They have to stop emailing you if you click that unsubscribe. Okay. Now, I want to caution you. We recently saw an alert that there are scammers who are sending out phishing emails and Charity will talk a little bit about phishing emails that try to trick you into clicking an unsubscribe link and then you get malware, which is just awful. And what I suggest is that if it's an email that looks weird for any reason or it's a company you can't remember ever doing business with, ignore it, just put that in the junk. Don't unsubscribe from those. But if it's what looks like a legitimate email from a company that you frequently get these emails from them, then it's probably safe to click the unsubscribe link. Now, there are some private companies that also purport to offer some opt-outs. And I say purport to because I am not endorsing whether or not these are going to work for you or not. But the American Advertising Association has a website called YourAdChoices.com that you can use to try to opt out of some targeted ads. And no companies have to opt you out of targeted ads. This is something they voluntarily do. The Direct Marketing Association. Actually, I think they're not called the Data and Marketing Association. They're called the Data and Marketing Association DMA. Offers a website called DMAChoice.org, which they purport to opt you out of certain direct marketing. Hopefully they're not actually collecting your information off of that website when you go there and selling it to data brokers. But those are two other options that you might consider. Let's go to the next slide. Okay. So if you rent in Vermont, we have some interesting protections for you that I just want to mention. Go on the next slide. Okay. There are three things that you should know about. First off, application fees in Vermont are illegal. If you apply to rent an apartment and they say, you know, there's a $35 nonrefundable fee, then that landlord is breaking the law. Now, if they say we need to run a credit check on you, then that is a legal fee. They can pass through the charge for the credit check. But that charge should only be $10, $20. It should not be a very high charge. Okay. Next, there's a really, really powerful protection for renters. Okay. If you've ever rented or if you currently rent, you know, you probably know that there have been times when there's some little, you know, the window is sticking. It doesn't open or the toilet is running or there's a leak or the refrigerator doesn't work. And you contact your landlord and say, I really need you to fix this. I really need you to fix this. And they say, we'll do it, we'll do it, we'll do it, but they never do. Okay. There is a law in Vermont called the repair and deduct law. And the way it works is this. If the cost to do a repair is less than half of your month's rent. You can go out and repair it yourself and deduct the amount from the following month's rent. Okay. I'm going to say that again. If there's a minor repair and it's less than half of your month's rent, you can have it done yourself. Pay for it to be done and just deduct that amount from the next month's rent. Now there are some caveats, there are some, you know, you want to pay close attention to the restrictions here. First off, it can't be a repair for something that you broke. Okay. If you broke it, you can't then, you know, we're talking about you normal wear and tear sort of stuff. The second thing is before you take advantage of repair and deduct, you have to give your landlord 30 days written notice that you're planning on doing that. So you send them an email. And then after 30 days, if they still haven't fixed it, then you can do it. You have to give them a heads up. And the third thing is keep your receipts. You need to be able to document the amounts that you paid. Okay. You can't rip off your landlord by taking advantage of this thing. Now, as a practical matter, what I have found works very well. I have taken advantage of the repair and deduct law in the past when I was a renter, but I never actually had to hire somebody to repair a window or a toilet because all you do is you write an email to your landlord and you say, they're landlord. I have asked you several times to repair this thing. And as I have not had it repaired, I am going to take advantage of Vermont's repair and deduct it. And if it is not repaired in the next 30 days, I will pay for it myself and deduct it from next month's rent. Now, any landlord who sees that is going to say, I'm sure that I can repair it for cheaper than whatever this person is going to repair it for. So I'm going to get it repaired because I want to do it and make sure I do it right and not have this person hire a random contractor to do it. So all you have to do is let the landlord know that you're planning on taking advantage of the repair and deduct it. And that should be enough to get a reasonable landlord to actually, you know, fix the thing. If they write back and threaten you and say, don't do that. That's illegal. I'll evict you or whatever. They're not allowed to do that. They cannot do that. Okay. They are not allowed to retaliate against you for taking advantage of the laws that exist to protect you. Okay. And by the way, if you don't have hot water, if you don't have heat, if you don't have those basic fundamentals that make your living space habitable, the remedy in Vermont is you're allowed to withhold your rent until those repairs are made. Okay. I actually once signed a lease here in Vermont from a, you know, well-known landlord. And in it, it said the tenant shall not withhold their rent. They're not allowed to do that. That's illegal. They are not allowed to prohibit you from withholding your rent. That's the remedy. And I pointed that out to the landlord. I said, I am going to cross out this paragraph because that's illegal. And I'm not signing on to that. And they said, okay. So, but this is very important. If you withhold your rent, you take your rent and you put it in a bank account. So that when the dispute is resolved, you pay them the rent withholding rent doesn't mean you don't have to pay rent for the months that the thing wasn't fixed. It means you don't pay your rent until it's fixed. And then you pay the rent that you owe. If you withhold rent and then spend it on something else. So that when it comes time to pay, you don't have the money anymore. Now you are, you know, failing to pay rent and you can be evicted for that. Right. So you want to do it the right way. If you're going to hold rent. Okay. Let's go on to the next thing. I think that might be the end of this one. Now we're going on to charity. I've talked long enough. Great. So Ryan, while I talk about identity theft a little bit, I see we have a question. So check that out. And when I'm done, it'll turn back to you and you can answer that question too. So I want to say with identity theft, we're going to talk about scams and a little bit, but protecting yourself. And your identity and your data is important because if you do find yourself in the clutches of a scam. And release some of your, your social security number or other data. Identity theft could occur. So this little section will talk a little bit about some preventative measures that, that we can take. And what that might look like. So here's some things to do. You can freeze your credit report. And that is very easy to do. You can freeze it. You can freeze it. You can freeze it. You can freeze it. And a lot of people just sort of keep. Their credit report frozen. And then if they need to get a car loan or something, they'll be can unfreeze it. You can have credit alerts or credit monitoring. To make sure that you're getting informed. If something. Should happen. You can also make sure that you are monitoring regularly, your credit report. And you can also get a new credit card. A new credit card opens up. And you didn't open it up. You'll know, Oh dear, I think I might have suffered some identity theft. To factor authentication. That's probably pretty familiar to everybody at this stage, but that's the, you know, I use my password to log in. And then I get a text message with a code. So it's two step process, which can protect your accounts. Passwords make them tricky. Don't make them ordinary. Use weird symbols. And that, and that kind of thing don't make them easy. Don't do, was it, was it Kanye West who was recorded in the, in the White House and his, his iPhone password was one, two, three, four or something. Don't, don't do that. And then robo calls. We could have a whole class on robo calls. And I can talk more about those when we talk about scams, but robo calls are. Very, as you know, common. We all get them. They unfortunately are often very scammy. And to protect yourself from falling for a scam, you can help yourself, not even get a robo call by signing up for a robo call, screening service such as no more robo. And most of the time you won't even get the robo call. And how no more robo works in another programs like that is basically they have an ongoing list of numbers. That they know to be scams. And so if one of those numbers reaches your phone, you'll never know because they all sort of trap it and keep it in a room. And you'll never know that that scamy call was coming her way. So that's another way to help yourself. Stay safe. And not have your identity frozen. So, so what if, and I don't know that we have a slide on this, but what happens if you do find yourself the victim of identity theft? Well, first you can always call us at the consumer assistance program cap. There's people there to help don't answer the phone. You can email us. The phone number is 1-800-649-2424. You can call and they'll kind of walk you through it. They can send you an identity theft packet that has information for you and just you don't have to go through it alone. You should just call cap. So that's my first piece of advice is to call them. But here's kind of what you would do if you fell victim to identity theft. We want to call the companies where you know the fraud occurred. So you can freeze those accounts or close the accounts, change the change the password or pin that you might have. You can do some of these things you already mentioned, the fraud alert, getting your credit report. You want to report the identity theft to a few places. One is the federal trade commission and they handle consumer issues on a federal level. You should also report to the local police and get a copy of the police report. So if ever down the road, you, you know, there's something happens because of this identity theft. You can say, look, I was the victim of identity theft. Hey, here's my police report to show you last year or whenever. You can also inform the IRS about this. And I think there's a form that they can, that you fill out so that they are aware as well that you were the victim of identity theft. And I'm going to, this is always a general role for any consumer issue. I'm telling you it in this context, but truly take careful notes on all the calls that you're making regarding the theft. If you send letters, try to send it either certified mail with the return receipt requested, or as Ryan said, you know, when you're talking to your landlord, send it via email. So you have a copy that, that went there and keep a nice file with all of this because I, you know, invariably what happens is you find out your, your identity has been stolen and three years past or two years and you can't quite remember, but if you keep those good notes, you'll be thanking yourself later. So that's a tip for you. My other big tip is the federal government, I think it's the FTC has a website that's identity theft.gov. And if you go to identity theft.gov, you can create your own like plan for how you're going to deal with this identity theft. So that's another really great tool to help you. It should you ever find that your identity has been stolen. So I think that's all of my, my tips and I'll just say, you know, protecting yourself like this with scams, they're very hard to shut down. They're often overseas and there's not much, you know, there's limited things that we can do to try to protect consumers from scams. So, you know, some of these tools are really useful and just protecting your identity from that. Ryan, did you, were you able to see what the question was? Do you want to answer that question? So the question was, was, was just about some of the acronyms that I used. One second. Okay. So I just typed out a number of the acronyms that I used in an answer in the chat section. You can find all of those, all of those acronyms there. Perfect. All right. I'll turn it back to you. And then when you're done with this section, we can talk about scams. Okay. Ah, how to complain to a business. Okay. This is, you know, this is going to be kind of brief, but the first thing that you should understand about businesses is, you know, they want your, they want happy customers. Okay. They want you to have a pleasant experience dealing with them. And for the most part, business people are, you know, honest, trustworthy folks who want to do the right thing. And so if something goes wrong with a transaction, often by, you know, being polite and just asking for what you want, you'd be surprised at how easily things can work out. And what I recommend is first off, if you're contacting a big corporation, okay, you will be talking to a customer service representative. Right. Customer service representatives. They are not the management. They are not the CEO. They are following a script and they are doing what they are permitted to do. And they're usually, you know, dealing with a lot of, I rate customers every day. It can be a very stressful job. If you are nice to customer service representatives, you know, treat them like human beings, that goes a long way. Also, there's no reason not to do that because, you know, they're just doing their job. So even if you're very, very angry and I rate with the business itself, don't take it out on the customer service representative. Okay. If the customer service rep can't do or says, look, there's absolutely no way I can do that. You can say, could you escalate this? Could I speak to a manager? You can go up the line that way. I have found that it can work to appeal to the fact that you are a loyal long-term customer and that, you know, you've always had good experiences with the business and, you know, you just want to make this little issue go away. I had an issue recently where I got a $60 charge on my propane bill because apparently I hadn't ordered enough propane the previous year. And somewhere in my contract it said, if you don't order this much propane, we're going to charge you $60. And I called them and I just kind of like said, you know, I didn't see that in the contract. And I normally order enough propane. Can we make this charge go away? Can we just, you know, wave the charge? Charges often can be waved. And usually it's a one-time thing. They won't let you do that multiple times, but, you know, it's amazing what you can ask for. If you order something on Amazon, Amazon.com, and it is not what you wanted, return it. There is a very liberal return policy on Amazon. You just go to your orders and you say, you check off cancel, return the orders. Often when you issue a return on Amazon, if it's a small enough item, you can ask you to return it. It's not worth their cost of shipping. So let's say keep the thing that you didn't want or that was wrongly delivered to you. And we're going to refund your money. It is amazing what some businesses will do. And the thing is it's always worth asking. It's always worth asking. And the worst they can say is no. And maybe you've lost a little bit of time. But importantly, if they violated one of the things that we talked about on today, let them know that you know the law. Okay, don't say I know the law. That's very aggressive. But say, listen, you know, I have a right to deduct half of my rent to pay this. And I know that. Listen, you didn't, you didn't tell me that I had three days to cancel. You were supposed to do that under the law. You had to do that. You have to give me my money back now because you didn't tell me about the three day right to cancel. But if you know what the laws are and how they protect you, you know, that will, you know, make the business realize that you are someone that they probably don't want to bother with, you know, having to worry about. So they'll often give you, you know, what I want, like Charity said with ID theft document everything, you know, keep your email back and forth so that you can, you know, if you eventually have to complain to cap, you have a nice paper trail that you can give them. You can give them evidence of what went wrong. So that's my, that's my suggestions for, for, you know, it's not about saying I'm going to sue you or threatening them or getting aggressive. Often just, you know, asking politely can go a long way and it never hurts. Never hurts to ask. You know, worse, worse than happen is, is they say no. That's it. All right. Let's talk about scams. Oh, I didn't go to your slide, Ryan. Here's a summary for folks. Let's talk about scam. So I think we all sort of know a scam when we see one, but just to orient ourselves, a scam is when someone is trying to basically trick you. Out of money. There's always some deception or trickery involved. It's not just a business that's trying to make money and you actually, you know, they're, they're a legitimate business. These are not legitimate. And we have, I know, because we all have phones today and Robo call scams are so prevalent. I know we've all been the target of a scam. All of us. We get so many Robo calls in this country every day, every second. It's tremendous. And so, keep in mind that in, and I'm sure Ryan will agree with me and is over 10 years at the Attorney General's office. I don't think we ever come across like a Robo call scam outfit in Vermont. That's not where these guys are. They're usually overseas. It's very difficult for, for anyone, any law enforcement to pursue those scammers. And certainly, you know, in Vermont, where it's really a big deal, you know, you know, you know, you know, the best thing we can do is educate everyone to know about scams and try to protect ourselves. So that's what I'm going to try to do here. I will say that we at the Attorney General's office have a system called scam alert. And you can sign up for scam alert and you can say, Hey, I only want the texts. I only want the emails, whatever you prefer, whatever method you prefer. And then you'll get an alert every time there's a hot scam. So for example, you know, I might get a call from the consumer assistance program or, you know, the Green Mountain power or whoever is getting the scam. We recently had one from Green Mountain power. Where someone was pretending to be Green Mountain power to try to get people to give them money. When I'm saying, you know, your, your bill is in, is overdue or is in a rear. And if we're going to shut down your electricity, if you don't send, you know, $50 or whatever it was. And we know all of a sudden this one day, it'll be, it'll always be one day, we'll get a whole bunch of scam reports at the consumer assistance program or someone out there, the press sometimes or a law enforcement officer will call us and say, Hey, we have this, this alert of a scam and we won't issue a scam alert. So you'll, you'll get a voice recording. Usually have Attorney General Donovan saying, you know, I'm calling because of a scam, scam alert. There's a scam out there today. Be, be, be aware of that. So that's a great way to protect yourself for that you, you're on, on guard and note of a, of a scam that's, that's coming up. Let's just talk a little bit about, but what is it the scammers want? So this, these basically is what they're going for. It's cash or gift cards or wire transfers. Gel the same as, as good as cash, as cash gift cards, as cash gift cards, as cash gift cards, as good as cash, as cash gift cards are for gifts. If someone is asking you to pay for something in gift cards, it's a scam. Why, why would they ask for gift cards? I mean, they, they, you could, you know, Venmo PayPal, there's so many great options now for getting someone money. They would never say send me gift cards. So don't go to Walmart and get a gift card to pay for anything. It's a scam. Trust us. So that's their, they would love that. The other way that they, the other thing that they want is you're personally identifying information. So they can use this to steal your identity. So it's your social security number or other identifying numbers, you know, I'm thinking like license, passport number, account numbers, anything that they can figure out who you are. And, or they can use to figure out what your password is. I mean, that's not technically a personal identifying information, but always be mindful of that. Like don't tell people your mother's maiden name, right? That's such a popular, that's such a popular, the first making model of your car or whatever. Don't, don't tell people that because they could still, you know, use that to steal your password. The other thing they might try to do is gain access to your accounts. Depending on the scam, we might see that too. So anytime someone you don't know, or someone you've just met online or something is trying to get some of this stuff from you, your, your, your yellow flag should be going off. Why do they want this for me? Is this, is there a scam going, going on here? So I flag that for you. Here is a list of popular scams. And we're going to talk about the top 10 scams in a minute, but let's just kind of take through these so that you know, you might be facing these things. Well, robocalls, of course we, we all know that how common scams come via robocall. Non-delivery, advanced speed, check caching, apartment rentals, romance, grandparent, those are very, very common. We'll talk about those in a minute. The work from home scams, free trial offers, the free vacation we've had some pieces about that, pyramid schemes, MLMs. I actually don't know what an MLM scheme is, Brian. You'll have to tell me about that one, what that means. That's a multi-level marketing. Of course, of course. The tax refund. Anytime someone's trying to give you money, be suspicious. I hate to be such a cynic, but it's true. The CEO scam, which is, you know, someone emails and says, hey, it's your CEO, just calling to say, you know, you need to wire this money to so-and-so, and you aren't looking carefully at their email address, and it's actually not your CEO, it's a scammer. Pump and dump, Ponzi scheme, a classic, and then pandemic scams. We have seen some of those, although not as many as I was expecting, but we certainly have seen those like vaccine scams and things like that. So here's just a kind of bunch of popular scams, but soon I will reveal the top 10 scams that we found in 2020 to be aware of. I will, I just do want to touch for a second on why are these scams effective? I think there's three things that I would highlight. The first is they're emotional. So they, you know, the grandparent scam or the romance scam, your emotions are in the floor rather than your logic. So you're concerned, you're worried, and you're not thinking logically, you're thinking about, you know, the grandparent scam in a nutshell is someone calls and pretends they're a relative of yours, a young relative that you would be concerned about, a nephew, a grandchild saying, don't tell my parents, but I was vacationing somewhere and I'm in the, you know, a car accident in jail, something, I need you to wire me $2,000 or whatever amount of money it is. And you're, you know, your feelings are in the floor, you're not thinking logically, I have to help my grandson or my nephew or whoever. And so you wire the money without, without, you know, taking a minute and the urgency, a lot of these will have an urgency. It's, you know, I'm the IRS and I'm calling and you're going to have to go to jail, go to jail, you know, is a big one. You're going to get arrested if you don't wire this money or your green mountain power scam I mentioned, where someone was trying to say, oh, we're going to shut off your electricity. But you're thinking, I can't go out, electricity, you're kind of, you know, acting quickly to try to prevent this from happening. So that's a second thing. Let's just talk about the top 10 scams of 2020. There's a pie chart. And I want to say these always change. If you look at this pie chart, even three years ago, a huge portion of those scams would have been the IRS scam, which didn't even make the top 10 last year. So things are effective and then they're not so effective because people get aware of them and they move on to something else. So right now the social security number scam is the big hot scam. And that is, again, it's, it's the government's supposedly saying that they, that your social security number has been compromised and you need to pay a fee or get over your social security number. So they're trying to get you, those are called phishing when they're trying to fish for information like your social security number and they want you to hand that over. So that's the largest scam we have. The truth is sometimes we get a lot of complaints or reports of that scam because people are aware of it. So what I can predict is that two years from now or three years from now, the social security number phishing scam won't even make the top 20, top 10 because people will know about it. So the next one in our pie chart you'll see is free money. What do we mean by free money? This is generally speaking, this is a sweepstakes scam. So it's, oh, you won $500,000. Congratulations. Congratulations. You just have to send a little money to get this, you know, a fee of something and then I'll send you $500,000 or a million dollars or whatever it is. It's free money scam, but it's often a sweepstakes scam. The Amazon and package deliveries phishing scam. So this is a scam that I feel like I am always thinking, this is the kind of scam I would call for. And it's my third, in addition to emotions and urgency, it's the third for me element that's effective. And that is, it just feels very routine and comfortable. Like you get a text. This is what always happens on my work phone for sure. I'm always getting texts. You have an Amazon, the Amazon package that you word has arrived and I'm like, charity, don't click on the link. Don't click on the link. This is a phishing scam. Don't do it. It's very challenging because it's like, oh yeah, I can see Amazon doing that. So it's very believable. Luckily I get so many scams for some reason on my work phone and I just don't click on anything that I get. The computer tech support scams and happen on your phone. It's usually on your computer. So you'll be on your computer and you'll get a little pop up. And the pop up will say, it'll look like a real, you know, virus stuff where logo or something. And it will say not always, but sometimes it will look very legitimate and it will say, oh no, you know, you, you have a virus, click here. Let me take over your computer. Give me access to your computer. And then they have access to everything. So you're, you're in a vulnerable position. You're, you have your emotions are high. There's a sense of urgency. It seems legitimate to you. It seems like a reaching thing. And then you, without thinking, you just give them access. So we always say, slow down. Just take your time. Take a moment when something like that happens. Don't, don't trust this stranger. Don't give them access to your computer. Call cap 1-800-649-2424. They can answer your questions. They'll talk through. If you're thinking, I don't know if this is a scam. Call them. They'll be able to say whether it's a scam or not. They're just there to help always or be stories. And then the phony relationships. We say not a grandchild scam. And that's because you'll see up at the top. We actually have a separate section for grandchild imposter scam for the grandparents scam. They're very, very popular. These imposter scams are really common. The romance scam is particularly heartbreaking of where someone is online and they'll use like, you know, words with friends or a Snapchat or whatever Instagram or an illegitimate dating app to forge a relationship with you and the whole time the person is thinking, oh, this is a real relationship. And then there's always some crisis. Like the supposed person is, you know, they got in a car accident and they ask you for money or they are supposed to fly to see you. And they need money for the ticket or something like that. And then they missed the flight or somebody died. There's always some story. And what's really tragic about those, I just helped film a commercial to raise awareness. So it's fresh in my mind. It's so tragic about those is the person when they find out, when it becomes clear, like, you know, this is not a real person on the other side. This is a scammer. It's so difficult to let go of the relationship that they thought they had. We get calls at the consumer assistance program from concerned relatives of people who've fallen for the scam. And the person just doesn't want to believe it's a scam. It's just, it's like too painful. So those are really heartbreaking debt collection. I'm just going to, those are the big ones, but I'll go through the rest. Debt collection on like classified listings. We see that a lot too. So I'm just going to call out Craigslist as being a really popular one. Hey, you're selling something on Craigslist. You're selling your bike. Oh, I'd like to buy your bike sound price sounds good. Listen, I don't live in Vermont. I live in San Diego. Can you I'm going to have my movers stop by. I will wire you the money. So listen to this scenario. I will, I will send the money to your account. Will you pay them? Not just when I'm paying you for this bike, but also the moving fee. I'll give it to you. So it's a thousand dollars for the bike and a thousand dollars for the moving fee. I'll wire you the money and you see in your account. Okay, cool. I got $2,000. You give it to the, so the suppose that you're thinking, I'm going to give this to the supposed mover. Um, you, you, uh, the mover never, never shows up. Meanwhile, you've paid the thousand dollars to the person for the bike. And that's just a thousand dollars for your account because guess what? It's fake. The whole thing is fake. So you've just wired the money. Um, and Craigslist, I'm sorry to say, but I'll, you see that we get complaints all the time about Craigslist. And the tricky thing with Craigslist is hardly anyone works there. There's like 50 employees and all of Craigslist. They don't have a lot of people who are there to help you rectify that situation. And, um, we just see those repeatedly, especially, um, not just things, but also apartments. We see scams relating to apartments on extortion emails. I already mentioned the grandchild imposter, the bank financial institution phishing scam. So these are the most common scams you saw in 2020. We released this list every, you know, January at some point. So if you're curious, next January, you can, um, you know, keep an eye out. The press usually covers this or you can come to our website and have a look. Um, let me just make sure I didn't miss anything. General rule for scams. If it sounds too good to be true, it is. The other thing is do not do not haul into the temptation of answering a scam call or responding to a scam text. Don't contact me again. This is a scam. What you're, what you're telling the scammer is I respond. So you'll get on the list. You don't want to be on that list. You want to be on the person who ignores all scams, don't engage, don't respond. Um, and don't ever give out any personal information and never allow access to your computer. That's something unfortunate we see. If you realize that you've fallen for a scam and it's, um, you have like 24 hours where something might be done. And Ryan mentioned, um, the credit card option. Sometimes we can stop the transfer and you should call cap and you can try to help you. If it's a weekend and cats close, you can, you know, try to go to the bank or whatever, wherever you bought the gift cards to try to act quickly. Don't sit on it. Act quickly. And you might be able to do something, but generally once it's cash, if it's a gift card, it's wiring, it's gone and there's nothing you can do about it. I'm sorry to say. So try to protect yourself from a scam. It's very hard to undo, um, once you've made the transfer. Here we go. Um, let me transition into home improvement fraud. Um, a home improvement fraud isn't a scam per se, but it is one of the most complained about problems that we hear about at the consumer assistance program. Um, essentially a home improvement fraud can take a couple different forms. I would say the, the most common is, um, someone agrees to do some work on your home. And they, you, you, you know, give them a deposit for that new roof for that new driveway. And then they never show up or they never finish the job. And that's essentially in a nutshell, a home improvement fraud looks like. There's two options. The first is the civil action. The second is, is a criminal action. So a civil action is available, um, under the Consumer Protection Act. Ryan went over the basics of deception and unfairness. Um, the other besides completing the work that started, they're never starting it. We're not completing it. Other, other things that might come up would be poor workmanship or complete incorrect products. Um, have been installed in your house that used to say, I, I, I'm contracting to have a, you know, wood floors put in my, uh, in my entryway of my home. And instead of wood floors, I walk in and it's a carpet or whatever. It's like completely wrong. So those are some of the options there. This is something that you see, um, in the criminal sphere as well. So this would be something generally brought by a state's attorney, although I know that our office has gotten involved when there is an actor who is repeatedly, um, finding themselves in, uh, in violation. Um, So we might get involved, but generally it's your county state's attorney. And there's penalties that are laid out in the statute. And, uh, basically it's the same kind of situation. Um, either they're using unfair deceptive act of practice to solicit the work or they fail to perform. And, uh, or they could misrepresent something really important about the terms of the contract that you might have with them. Um, and the other thing that would fall under this in the criminal sphere would be, uh, if there's price gouging when there's a state of emergency. Um, and it has to be like a declared state of emergency, not just a perceived state of emergency. I would say this, I think maybe is number three or four of the most common complaints that we receive at CAP. It's, it's really common. In part, I think that's because when there's money lost, it can be a really large number. You know, it can be like a roof. That's really expensive or a new driveway can be really expensive. And so people take the time to make it, make the complaint. Um, with our, with our office and, uh, we can try to help them, you know, get their, get their money back. We sadly, we've also had situations, um, where people just skip town. We never, we can't find them. We don't know where they went and, and that's the end of the story. So, um, there's a few things that you can do to protect yourself if you're having improvements done to your home. The first is to check the home improvement fraud registry, which you can find that registry on our website. It's a registry of individuals who have had to be listed there based on past action. So if you find them on the, uh, home improvement fraud registry, then you are on notice that they've had some issues with this in the past. So that would be the first step to check the home improvement fraud registry. It's updated every quarter or something like that. It was so often it's updated. So you want to check that. The second is always, always put it in writing, have a contract. You don't need to be a lawyer to have a contract. There's plenty of models available, but it's just an understanding between you and the contractor doing work. It says, here's what I'm expecting you to do. Here's what I'm going to pay you to do it. Here's the time frame. Um, it's incredibly useful to have that in writing. It creates understanding. It also means that if you have a contract and there's a breach, no, now you have a breach of contract claim. Let me tell you a little bit about, um, The bill that is almost through the legislature right now. It's that we've, I think we call the home improvement, uh, contractor registry. It will literally be a registry of all home improvement contractors, which currently doesn't exist. It will be housed at the secretary of state's office. It, um, the bill which has passed both the house in the Senate and is going to be in a, in what's called a conference committee where the house in the Senate will have members who work out some of the details. And that will happen, you know, January, February, when the legislature returns. Um, but in addition to the registry, there's going to be some requirements. Notably, there will be a contract required, um, over a certain amount of dollars, uh, cost of whatever the work is that's being done. And I think the secretary of state's going to have like a form contract to help you. So they'll have a model that you can use for your own contract. If the contractor itself doesn't have one that your, um, your, your carpenter working in your house, your root for your, your driveway repair person, whoever. The other thing is, um, the, uh, The registry itself will be very useful. And, um, I think that there'll be resources available for contractors as well. So it's not just consumers will benefit, but contractors as well. So that will be a very useful, um, a useful thing. The other, uh, couple of tips, avoid large deposits. You should not be putting, you know, 75% of the total cost down just so that your risk is lower. Just put a modest deposit down and never agree to pay for the whole thing upfront. Um, you want to make sure the work is complete before you pay. And that will protect you from, from, um, getting defrauded. Uh, notice that there's some red flags when you're hiring your contractor. Um, Jordan or solicitation by someone who was passing by happened to notice some law. And we have seen unfortunately weeks and cases where, um, unscrupulous actors were doing that. So they were going door to door and saying, Oh, I noticed this problem, um, with your house that really wasn't a problem, but they were just making it up to, to get a little work. Um, or not work because they would take your deposit and then you never see them again. Um, Also saying that there are materials left over from another job. So we'll give you a good price. Um, we've unfortunately seen cases, uh, in that vein and the materials were not good. Um, and then suggesting that to help you complete the work, if you can't pay for it, that you contact someone they know. So, Oh, you, you can't afford this new roof. Don't worry. My friend, so-and-so, um, Lends money for this kind of thing. And that is something to be suspicious of and have a, um, you know, a red flag for you. Always when in doubt, if you're concerned, you can always call the consumer assistance program and they can remind you of these tips or help you find the, the, um, home improvement fraud registry. If you, if you need it, anything like that, um, cap's always there for you. I'll give you the number again, 1-800-649-2424. You can always call in if you have a consumer question, they're there to help. Um, so I think that brings us to our resources section, Ryan, if, um, if you want to take it from here. Absolutely. And, and what are we actually like? Oh, sounds like we have a little echo going on here. I don't hear, I don't hear the echo. So. Oh, you don't. Okay. Um, I would like to try to share my screen. Oh, I think I might have to stop sharing my screen. Let's see. Oh, it says host disabled participant sharing. Do you know if you can, because what I've done is I brought up a number of websites. That work. Let's try it. Oh, it worked. Okay. Now I just, okay. Okay. So the first website. Is a GO. Vermont. Ryan, it says, Brian Krueger has started sharing, but actually don't see anything other than those words. Oh, it's just like lack with those words. Oh, we think, I'll just say something else. Okay. Now it's like a big. Can you see it? Yeah, but it's like gigantic, but we see that. Yes, there we go. Boom. Okay. Yeah, I had it. Okay. So this is the cap website, ago.vermont.gov slash cap. That's the consumer assistance program. And how did I find this? I just Google Vermont consumer assistance program and it brought me here. Okay, or you can write down that website. Next, give me one second. I'm just going to mute myself and unmute you because I'm hearing an echo on my hand for a second here. A little bit of an issue here. We also have a question here. Yeah. Others are hearing the echo as well. Charity, could you mute yours? That's a good idea. Let me see if this helps. Okay. Yeah, I think that made the echo go away. Okay, great. That's why you couldn't hear the echo. Okay, so we have a consumer assistance program website, and that has your information that you will need to either call them or contact them. Okay. Next, if you have a fraud report, you can also report to the Federal Trade Commission. So that's reportfraud.ftc.gov. So if a fraud has happened, and here's the thing, if you report a fraud to the Federal Trade Commission, they're not going to necessarily respond to your fraud, but they track these things to find trends and to figure out where the bad actors are. So you're kind of doing a, you know, a civic duty. You're being a good citizen by telling the FTC that there's some fraud going on there. Okay, and actually now that I think about it, there's another one. And that is ic3.gov. Well, it's not coming up. Okay, here we go. So ic3.gov, www.ic3.gov, is the Federal, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center. So if you've been internet-scammed, you can also report to them. Okay, so if you've been internet-scammed, you can report to CAP. You can report to the Federal Trade Commission, and you can report to the FBI. And doing that will help them catch the bad guys. Okay. The Department of Financial Regulation is where you go if you have problems with a bank, with an insurance company, investment companies, any sort of financial businesses, you can complain about them, file a complaint with the Department of Financial Regulation. You can also go directly to some of these places, and they have lists. This is where you would go to find out if a lender is licensed or if a securities broker is licensed. Okay, you can search on this website. Now, the CFPB, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is the federal DFR, the federal version of Vermont's, or you could say DFR is the state version of the CFPB. Okay, this was actually invented by Senator Warren from Massachusetts. It was her brainchild, and she got this thing created in the wake of the mortgage bubble crisis. And she wanted to be the first head of the CFPB, but the senators did not like her, blocked her from doing that. And so she said, okay, instead I'm going to run for Senate, then she became a senator instead of running the CFPB. So that's how she got that happen. The next thing I want to talk to you about is alerts. Okay, so there are some very useful alerts. There is the Vermont Alert System, and this is through the Vermont Emergency Management, VEM.vermont.gov slash VT Alert. Or you can just go to Google and Google Vermont Alerts, and it will get you here. And you can provide your phone number or your email address for both, and it will email or text you or call you with alerts. And you can sign up for scam alerts, and you will get voicemails from TJ Donovan telling you about what the latest alert is. This is also useful because they give you weather alerts. They give you, you know, if there's any sort of major danger, you will get an alert from the VT Alert System. So that's very useful to sign up for, and you can select which alerts you want, and they know where your location is. So you'll only get weather alerts for your specific location. And then in addition, the Federal Trade Commission has scam alerts. And so you can click get email updates, and just Google Federal Trade Commission scam alerts. You can also go and you can just, you know, and how do they know about these scam alerts? Well, people are reporting them through the fraud reporting. So if you want to, you know, the best way to avoid scams is to know what the scams are. And if you are getting the scam alerts, you will be on the front lines of knowing what these scams are before they can affect you. And you can tell your friends about them and your family about them, your grandparents. And you can make sure that everybody is protected. Knowledge is really one of the best ways to protect yourself from scams. So those were some resources that I wanted to share with y'all. And that's everything. I think we have some time for questions. We're very close to the end here. Brian, do you want to stop sharing your screen? Sure will. Let's see here. Stop share. There we are. Okay. So I'm not seeing any questions in the Q&A. Are there any other questions? You have us at your disposal. What's on your mind? We're here. We have a few more minutes. So maybe you're just overwhelmed with all the information we've given you. And Ryan, thank you for that tour of all those websites. That's really, really useful to just see they're all there for you. And remember, if you come up with a question later, you can always call consumer assistance program. Oh, can we get a question? Yes. So it was noted that when you're looking at these URLs, you want to make sure that the URL says dot gov at the end of it. Okay, not dot com, not dot EU or some other weird ending. It'll be dot gov. Only government websites are allowed to have dot gov at the end of the website. Well, if there aren't any more questions, we can end this webinar and hope that it's useful for you. We're going to post it on our Facebook page. So if it was a lot of information really quickly, or you want to remind yourself of something that Ryan or I said, you can look at the attorney general's Facebook page and that's where it will, where it will live. I think eventually you probably will have a page on our website as well that will house all of our people's law school courses. But for now it'll be on our Facebook page within a few days. I hope you have enjoyed this and I thank Ryan for joining me in this presentation and I will end the webinar. Thanks everybody for coming. Thank you.