are travel sweepstakes legitimate

If you receive a phone call, email, text, or flier like this, you may have just been targeted for a travel sweepstakes scam. Scammers often target older adults since they have more disposable income and travel a lot but anyone can be a victim. En espa ol Who wouldn t want to win thousands or even millions of dollars, or the chance to go on a luxury vacation? There are many legitimate sweepstakes and contests out there, and the idea of winning some fabulous prize can be mighty alluring. Con artists get that, and they exploit your eagerness to score that big check or dream trip. To appear more legitimate, some sweepstakes scams pretend to come from government organizations such as the FTC or the National Sweepstakes Board which doesn t actually exist . Real sweepstakes sponsors send their win notifications directly to the winners. Scams to Watch Out For. Ignore Phony AARP Gift Card Offers Spammers promising $1,000 cards really want your personal data. Watch Out for Travel Scams Cybercrooks set their sights on your frequent-flier miles and even more. Grandparents! Don t Fall for This Scam Thieves are making money by posing as family members in need. If you d like to win a free cruise, visit the Cruise Sweepstakes list. 1. Sandals Resorts – Sandals and Beaches Q2 2021 Sweepstakes. This could be your chance to win a free vacation at a luxury resort, a prize worth up to $2,043. Entry Frequency One time per person email. What follows is a list of accepted Twitter practices. Most of these items are common courtesy, and some are things that aren t as intuitive to new Twitter users. While most of these items won t get you booted off Twitter, not following certain rules of etiquette can cost you some followers Don t spam. If a potential follower takes a peek at your Twitter stream and it s nothing but preprogrammed links, she s going to turn tail and run. If you post sales or traffic driving links all day, you re going to lose community. If you talk only about yourself, your brand, or your product, you ll never enjoy a good conversation. Balance your promotional tweets with conversational tweets. Be positive. There s a time and place for negativity, and Twitter usually isn t it. Avoid rants, profanity, and depressing woe-is-me type topics. If you re bringing down the mood of the community, they won t feel the love anymore and will unfollow. Don t use all caps. TYPING IN ALL CAPS IS CONSIDERED YELLING. It hurts the eyes, too. Avoid it at all costs. Don t swear unless you re sure that your community isn t easily offended by profanity. Some people don t mind a little cursing, but others do. If you re going to go the edgy route, make sure that your community is comfortable with it. If you re joining a Twitter chat, let your community know. When you participate in a Twitter chat, you generally have more tweets in your stream than usual. Give a tweet before beginning to let everyone know that you re joining a chat and will tweet more than normal for the next hour or so. Don t feel you need to follow everyone who follows you. Not everyone who follows you is a good fit. Don t feel compelled to follow everyone who follows you first. By the same token, don t be afraid to unfollow someone who doesn t sit well with you or your brand s message and tone. Give credit where it s due. If you re sharing a tip, quote, or link you saw someone else share, give that person credit. You don t want a reputation as someone who steals other people s thunder. Don t hijack someone else s hashtag. Don t use someone else s hashtag to promote your stuff. It s wrong and will turn off both old and new followers. Don t respond to a tweet with a sales push. If someone is reaching out to the community for assistance, don t respond with a link to something promotional. It makes you look insincere. Instead, reach out with genuine, helpful information. Avoid private jokes. If you can t share with everyone, don t share at all. 1. Brand DNA It sounds simple, but it is a minefield. Suppose the agency has a shoe polish account, and another of its clients decides to go into the shoe polish business. What do we do? Not many companies outlive the centuries. If your retirement faith is put into one company in the form of either 1 your job, 2 your pension, or 3 their stock, you HOPE the company survives. You make a bet. Many retirees discover too late that their retirement pensions are lost to mismanagement by company executives. Others who focus their wealth into one company stock accept great risk that the stock will be worth more in the future. If you assign your retirement unto others, you then accept external risks that you can t control. When the torque of you re financial plan resides with others, you re likely to lose control. The professor met me at the door, having climbed out of bed at 11 00 A.M. after spending the night programming. I suppose we shouldn t make up our minds in advance about what globe-trotting scientists look like, because in most cases it doesn t pay off, at least not for me. On paper Benjamin Goertzel, Ph.D., brings to mind a tall, thin, probably bald, effortlessly cosmopolitan cyberacademic, who may ride a recumbent bicycle. Alas, only the thin and cosmopolitan parts are right. The real Goertzel looks like a consummate hippie. But behind John Lennon glasses, long, almost dreadlocked hair, and permanent stubble, his fixed half smile plows undaunted through dizzying theory, then turns around and explains the math. He writes too well to be a conventional mathematician, and does math too well to be a conventional writer. Yet he s so mellow that when he told me he d studied Buddhism and hadn t gotten far, I wondered how far would look on such a relaxed, present spirit.