The sixth annual REALTOR® Safety Week falls on September 13-19 this year. Now is the time to focus on best practices for ensuring your personal safety as well as your clients’ safety, home and office safety, and more. This includes safe Internet practices!

A broker recently alerted KCRAR to a scam taking place around the country as well as locally. An individual named Peter Kenwood (similar scams have been seen under the name of Andy Bishop) has been e-mailing requests for property information to agents around the country. When he receives a reply from an agent, including his requested “information for wiring the EMD to the seller,” he somehow has access to accounts.

Please recognize this as a scam and do not correspond with this individual. Alert other agents in your office to this as well! Make sure you know who you are working with before you give out any personal account information.

To get you started on building your safety awareness throughout the year, KCRAR will share some safety tips with you in Realeyes Online Update throughout the month of September.

Here are this week's tips:

Tip #7
Got cell service, everywhere? When you’re showing commercial property, thick walls and/or remote locations may interfere with mobile phone reception. Check in advance to be sure your phone is serviceable in the area in which you are showing the property.

Tip #8
Shield your computer from e-mail viruses. Computer viruses can impair and seriously damage your computer. Viruses are often distributed via attachments in e-mail spam. Never open an attachment from someone you don’t know, and, if you receive a strange or impersonal-sounding message from a familiar address, check with that person to make sure that they really sent it.

Tip #9
Choose flight over fight. While every real estate agent should take a basic self-defense course, the primary goal in any threatening situation is to escape from immediate danger and call for help.

For more safety information, visit www.realtor.org/safety.