Laurels & lances: Texting and scamming
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Laurel: To good technology. Text messaging has become one of the primary reminders in our lives.
Order a pizza? A text tells you when it’s being delivered. Your kid missed school? A text confirms the absence was excused. Texts remind you of doctor appointments, flight times, hotel reservations and more. Now they even remind you about court.
Westmoreland County is joining an optional statewide program of the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts. The program allows people to receive text or email notifications about court dates. The idea is to increase the number of people who show up for court and decrease the number of warrants issued for skipping the mandatory appointments.
It’s an idea that recognizes people no longer have landlines the way they once did, and that mailing addresses might change, but cellphones and email addresses aren’t tethered to just one place.
Westmoreland is one of 10 counties where district courts are participating. Ten also are using it for Common pleas court. Berks, Elk, Greene and Lehigh counties are doing both. Let’s hope it works at Westmoreland and will be expanded to the higher level of court.
Lance: To scamming kids. We are used to all kinds of crime capitalizing on the internet. People target seniors or people donating to charity or someone looking for a love connection. But is there anything worse than taking aim at kids?
Valley High School’s Drama Club is staging “The Addams Family” this weekend. The show is going on, despite the production being scammed out of $8,000 for costumes that weren’t delivered. Other schools across the region pitched in to help outfit the students when The Staging Workshop of Texas didn’t provide the agreed-upon costumes.
After the Trib wrote about Valley’s predicament, the director of Linganore High School in Frederick, Md., saw the story and believes the same thing happened to her group. The costumes for their production of “Shrek” also have not been shipped, and additional money was charged to the school’s credit card.
It’s a hard lesson to learn for students and the adults supporting them, but just telling groups to be careful about the businesses they engage online isn’t helpful. Everyone does business online now, making it easy for the bad actors to slip through.