Nothing to do in Alva?

When I hear people say there’s nothing to do in Alva, I think they must not be paying attention. Last week I attended the Chocolate Fantasy put on by Friends of the Alva Public Library. The auditorium was packed Thursday evening, and the event brought in over $12,000 to benefit the library.

The First Friday Art Walk was a little slow in attendance when I dropped by. However, the Festival of Cultures was going on at NWOSU and there was a big bull riding contest at the fairgrounds.

This week, the Lieutenant Governor’s Turkey Hunt will begin Wednesday evening. It’s a chance for Alva and Woods County to show some hospitality to folks who might be looking for a business location.

Northwestern will host two performances of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat – Thursday night at 7 p.m. and Saturday afternoon at 2 p.m. In addition to participation from college students, there’s a vocal chorus of elementary age students.

A new mural is going up this Saturday in Alva. The mural will be placed on the side of the drive through at Holder Drug. We don’t have an exact time, but you might keep a lookout for the new addition. Of course, the installation will depend on the cooperation of the weather.

In addition to all this, we have three movies every night, a bowling alley and a full schedule of spring sports.

Scam Prevention

Last week I wrote about telephone scams. A few days later, I received the May edition of Consumer Reports. The cover reads “Mad about robocalls? So are we!” The next day, the AARP Bulletin for April arrived with a special report: How we can beat fraud.

Consumer Reports says the average frequency of robocalls in the US in 2018 was 1,517 per second. That comes to over 47 billion calls for the year. During December last year, 39.38 percent of those calls were scams, 23.43 percent were alerts and reminders, 19.82 percent were payment reminders and 17.39 percent were telemarketing.

As to how consumers attempt to control these calls, 70 percent of those surveyed said they stopped answering their phone if they don’t recognize the number or if the caller’s number is anonymous. About 62 percent let most calls go to voicemail. Asked how annoying they find robocalls, 52 percent of survey respondents said they were tremendously annoying (10 on a 1 to 10 scale). And 15 percent of adults said they or a loved one had been scammed or defrauded by a robocall.

AARP lists these rules to cut down on scam calls:

• Add your name to the National Do Not Call Registry. Call the FTC at 888-382-1222 from the phone you want to register or go to donotcall.gov.

• Don’t answer calls from numbers you don’t recognize. Smart phones may have a Do Not Disturb feature so only calls from people on your contacts list will even ring. Everyone else goes straight to voice mail.

• Be prepared to hang up. If you answer and hear a robocall, don’t say anything. Just hang up. Do not respond to questions, especially those answered with a “yes.” Your response could be recorded and used by someone else to authorize fraudulent charges over the telephone. And don’t hit a button when prompted to stop getting calls. That could lead to more calls.

Also be careful online:

• Be wary of public Wi-Fi. Scammers can tap into public Wi-Fi accounts and access information you send and receive.

• Watch what you share on social media. Don’t share your phone number, your home address, anything related to your work, payment information, relationship status, health information, birthday or Social Security number.

• Don’t reveal your location. Posting photos from a location or vacation can reveal you’re not home.

AARP also listed some of the latest phone scams. One was the Social Security scam I wrote about last week.

There’s also the jury duty scam supposedly from a police officer who says there’s a warrant for your arrest because you missed jury duty. You’re given a number to call, and they try to convince you to pay a large “fine” to stay out of jail.

For more than a month, I received a daily call on this one: the Pain Center Scam. An “unavailable” number called saying I might qualify for a pain-relieving brace for my back or knee. Then you’re told to press 1 to speak to a product specialist. This is more likely to be a Medicare fraud. Quality medical products general are not sold over the phone.

The above is only a small portion of the helpful information in these publications.