Internet users: Beware of scams!

I have been using the Internet for many years via my iPhone and computer. It has been a very useful tool, however on occasion, it has been a mixed blessing, due to my falling for costly, embarrassing scams on more than one occasion. I'll cite two recent examples:

A couple of years ago, I had a “PayPal” account that I had used for many years for my online eBay sales. Since moving to Regency, I wasn't doing eBay anymore so wanted to retrieve whatever balance I had in the account. To find PayPal's contact phone number, I Googled “PayPal” and obtained (what appeared to be) their official phone num...