This week on the perfect scam.

People are so desperate now just to get through to someone from the company and talk.

I don't know if I would call it an epidemic yet, but we're getting pretty close to it. The search engines are being

manipulated, leveraged for nefarious purposes, and this is one of the worst things that can

happen, is you know know you put your trust in

Google you think that when you are searching for the customer service phone

number that you're actually going to get a customer service phone number and

you're not. Welcome back to the perfect scam.

I'm your host Bob Sullivan.

If you've heard it from me once, you've heard it a thousand times.

If you receive an unexpected phone call from a company,

hang up and call them back on a number you know is valid.

This advice is very, very crucial.

But in today's story, we're going to go just a little bit deeper on this advice.

How do you find a number that is valid?

Well, this part is critical because it's important to understand that criminals have figured out how to deceive search engines like Google

and manage to put in front of consumers fake phone

numbers that look like they belong to the real company. It's sometimes called

Malvertizing malicious advertising.

And when that happens, disaster can follow.

That's what today's guest says happened to her,

right when she was already dealing with,

...