Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial kickoff for summer.

We're all looking forward to a three day weekend, but unfortunately, scams are also a hot topic during this time of year.

Tonight, we continue our conversation with Heather Clary and the Better Business Bureau of Greater Kentucky region.

Talk about how you can protect your money and personal information.

You may have received text messages from scammers posing as businesses or government agencies that don't typically communicate with you that way.

Clary says to think twice before clicking any links in fishy text or emails.

If you're not sure if something is a scam and a link is included in the text or the email, rather than click on that link, log in to the site independently yourself, and then go in and see if you have any kind of a notification or anything, because that way you don't open your device to being infiltrated by a virus or whatever the scam artist wants you to do, or the information they might want to steal from you.

If you follow the fake link that looks oh so real.

Scams centered on cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin have also been on the rise in recent years.

Investment scams have been very big in the Scam tracker risk report for the past couple of years, linked to cyber coins, bitcoins, you know, all that kind of thing.

And a lot of people aren't really familiar with how all of that works.

Cryptocurrency.

And, you know, it's still seems very mysterious to some people.

It's out there.

And the con artists will love to have you just follow their directions and do what they say.

And oh, you can't lose.

And that's another big sign of a scam, especially when it comes to investment scams.

Guaranteeing you excellent return, those kinds of things.

Nobody legitimate is going to do that.

There are steps you can take to help yourself, your community, and the better business Bureau fight these scams.

One way the public can help not only the BBC and other authorities who look to our website, but their fellow consumers and businesses, is to use our scam tracker site.

That is where the public can report whatever scam someone either attempted to pull.

Or maybe you did fall for it.

Describe the scam, what category it falls into.

We're not going to share your personal information with the world, but we will collect it, for our demographic purposes.

However, it's going to ask you what happened.

You know, did you lose money or not?

It's fascinating reading.

I mean, if you log on there, you can even just pick a category.

You want to look up and see what people have reported.

It can be very telling, and it'll show you even what state.

If you want to look at what state something might have happened in.

Excellent way to keep track of what the newest scams are out there, and quite frankly, sometimes you're going to see the same ones pop up over and over again.

And if these are the same kinds of scams that keep rolling around, it means they're working, or else the con artist wouldn't keep trying to pull them.

So it's good to educate yourself in that manner, and we invite you to report them as well, so that we can help warn other people.

Stay alert this summer and remember, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Think twice before clicking on links in your inbox and only share your financial information with trusted, verified professionals.

For Kentucky Edition, I'm Clayton Dalton.