With the Census Bureau continuing its attempt to obtain information from the public, it’s always a good idea to be aware of parties claiming to represent the Bureau for scamming purposes.
A scammer’s goal is to call and try to extract personal information from you. For instance, they could:
- Call you and ask you to provide your household information, or other sensitive data that the actual census would not ask for.
- Your full social security number
- Your full bank or credit card account numbers
- Your mother’s maiden name
- Money or donations
- Manipulate Caller ID so that your phone displays the call as coming from the Census Bureau, when in reality it’s a robocaller or some other type of scam artist.
The Census Bureau does sometimes initiate phone calls to people in order to collect Census data, but you can always verify that you’re talking to a real census rep. by calling the Census Bureau’s National Processing Center to confirm the identity of the Census agent. If the caller cannot be identified, do not under any circumstances provide the caller with any information.
For more information on how to contact the Census Bureau directly and find tips on how to avoid other types of fraudulent census activity and scams, please click on the link below:
https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/surveyhelp/fraudulent-activity-and-scams.html
