Slideshow: Tornadoes ravage Plains

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Destroyed vehicles lie in the rubble outside the Plaza Towers Elementary school in Moore, Okla., on Tuesday.

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For many, it's impossible to view the heartbreaking stories coming out of Oklahoma and not feel an overwhelming urge to do something. But following your first impulse to help could just lead to more heartbreak, as many charitable givers often fall prey to scams in the wake of national tragedies.

Authorities are warning would-be donors to think carefully before they donate, and before they click.

"There is always a high probability for con-artists or 'travelers' to pop-up in the state following a storm, pushing quick-fix repair schemes and charity scams," Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt said in a press release. He urged Oklahomans to stay alert.

Scam artists crawl out of the woodwork only hours after the first pictures of death and destruction emerge. Like clockwork, spam emails, fake Facebook pages, telemarketing phone calls — even full-fledged websites that accept credit cards — pop up, all claiming falsely that they are collecting money for victims. Virus writers also get into the act, sending around booby-trapped emails that appear to come from charities, but are designed to invade victims' computers.

Pruitt said people around the country should donate to "reputable" organizations such as the Salvation Army or Red Cross. "The first scam we typically see after devastation like this is charity fraud,” he said

Pruitt also said his department has already sent 30 investigators into the tornado-ravaged area to stop local scams, fraud and price gouging.

For a detailed list of ways to help Oklahoma victims, visit NBC News' How to Help page.

Attorneys general in several other states, from Washington to South Carolina, have also issued charity fraud warnings.

Even consumers who wouldn't normally fall for scams are at risk in the aftermath of major disasters because the overwhelming sadness of the events, and the urgency of the need, can override a giver's natural sense of skepticism. The same urgency force is at play whenever a scam artist insists that a supposedly great deal is only available for a short time.

Federal Trade Commission spokesman Frank Dorman said he didn't believe his agency had received any complaints about Oklahoma-related scams yet, but that's not unusual: victims wouldn't yet realize they'd been scammed, he said.

The agency does offer an extensive set of tips for evaluating charities.

Consumers should beware anyone who:

• Uses high-pressure tactics like trying to get you to donate immediately, without giving you time to think about it and do your research.
• Refusing to provide detailed information about its identity, mission, costs and how the donation will be used.
• Won't provide proof that a contribution is tax deductible.
• Uses a name that closely resembles that of a better-known, reputable organization.
• Thanks you for a pledge you don’t remember making.
• Asks for donations in cash or asks you to wire money.
• Offers to send a courier or overnight delivery service to collect the donation immediately.

Follow Bob Sullivan on Facebook or Twitter. 

Related content:

• National Guard: 'Words can't describe' the Okla. damage
• 'She was always happy': Families grieve tornado victim
• The latest on the aftermath of the Oklahoma tornado
• Tornado victim separated from spouse: 'The house totally disappeared'

Cultura RF / Getty Images stock

A woman checks her phone while at the computer.

Are gadgets making us dumber? Two new studies suggest they might be. One found that people who are interrupted by technology score 20 percent lower on a standard cognition test. A second demonstrated that some students, even when on their best behavior, can't concentrate on homework for more than two minutes without distracting themselves by using social media or writing an email.

Interruptions are the scourge of modern life. Our days and nights are full of gadgets that ping, buzz and beep their way into our attention, taking us away from whatever we are doing.

We've known for a while that distractions hurt productivity at work. Depressing research by Gloria Mark at the University of California, Irvine, says that typical office workers only get 11 continuous minutes to work on a task before interruption. With smartphones reaching near ubiquity, the problem of tech-driven multitasking — juggling daily tasks with email, text messages, social media etc — is coming to a head.

Multitasking has been  the subject of popular debate, but among neuroscientists, there is very little of that. Brain researchers say that what many people call multitasking should really be called “rapid toggling” between tasks, as the brain focuses quickly on one topic, then switches to another, and another.  As all economics students know, switching is not free. It involves "switching costs" — in this case, the time it takes to re-immerse your mind in one topic or another.

Researchers say only the simplest of tasks are candidates for multitasking, and all but one of those tasks must involve automaticity. If you are good at folding laundry, you can probably fold laundry and watch TV at the same time, for example.

Overestimated abilities
Despite this concern among brain scientists, many people overestimate their ability to multitask, such as the college student who thinks he can text and listen to a lecture simultaneously. He cannot, says brain expert Annie Murphy Paul, who writes "The Brilliant Blog."

"Multitasking while doing academic work — which is very, very common among young people — leads to spottier, shallower, less flexible learning," Paul warned in a recent column.

The two studies mentioned above underscore this point. 

In the first, Alessandro Acquisti and Eyal Peer at Carnegie Mellon University's Human Computer Interaction lab recruited 136 college students to take a standard test of cognitive abilities, and invented a controlled method of distraction. Test-takers were interrupted via instant message, which they were told contained important additional instructions, during the exam.

(The research was conducted in concert with research for The Plateau Effect, a book I recently co-authored with Hugh Thompson.)

The interrupted group answered correctly 20 percent less often than members of a control group.

The Carnegie Mellon test might seem a bit contrived, however, because the control group was pretty unrealistic. It's hard to find a group of college students who could take a test without being interrupted by gadgets.

Larry Rosen, a professor at California State University-Dominguez Hills, published a study in the May issue of Computers in Human Behavior that attempted to quantify how often students of all ages are distracted by technology while studying. Even under ideal circumstances, the results were dismal.

Rosen's observers followed 263 students into their normal study environments — bedroom, library, den — and told them to work on an important school assignment for 15 minutes. Even knowing they were being watched, the students couldn't resist texting or using social media. So-called "on-task" behavior started declining at about the two minute mark, and overall, only 65 percent of the time was used on schoolwork.

"We really assumed we set up a situation where people would try to impress us," said Rosen, an expert in the psychology of technology. "Frankly, I was appalled at how quickly they became distracted."

'Problem built into the brain'
The two studies, published closely together, generated strong reaction, particularly from students.

"Yes, we text in class, but if my grade in that class is and A or a B I don’t see why it’s a problem," wrote one student to Paul.

It's a big problem for both students and adults, Paul counters, for plenty of reasons. Assignments inevitably take longer when learners split their time between tasks, she says. All that task-switching wears out the brain and makes learners more tired and less competent. Most important, several studies have shown that information learned while partially distracted is often quickly forgotten, so the learning is tragically shallow.

The key to transferring new information from the brain's short-term to long-term memory is a process called "encoding." Without deep concentration, encoding is unlikely to occur, explained Nicholas Carr in his book “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains.” 

So Paul is among a group of researchers who worry that the digital divide is not about the gadget haves and have nots, but rather about those who can resist the constant distracting tug of technology and those who cannot. She compares it to the famous marshmallow test, which shows that children who can delay eating one marshmallow for 10 or 15 minutes on the promise of gaining a second one are the most likely to succeed later in life. In a new "marshmallow" test, educators or employers might test to see how long people can resist "a blinking inbox or a buzzing phone."

"There are those people who think that multitasking is simply the way life is now and we should be focusing on getting better at it ... that we are a bunch of old fogies who don't understand," Paul said. "But scientifically, there is no evidence for that. There are fundamental biological limits to what the brain can pay attention to. This is a problem built into the brain."

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Prepaid debit cards, long synonymous with frustrating or even exploitative fees, are suddenly a pretty good deal. In fact, artfully deployed, a prepaid card can be used without any fees at all, and serve as a real substitute for a checking account.

It should come as no surprise, however, that there is still plenty of small print to worry about.

It would have been unthinkable a few years ago to put the words "good deal" and "prepaid card" in the same sentence. Called "general purpose reloadable cards" by the industry, prepaid debit cards that allow repeated deposits have always come with a laundry list of traps designed to grab $2-$3 at time from unsuspecting card holders: fees for loading, fees for withdrawing, fees for checking balances, fees for doing nothing. (A story in 2009 recounted an ordeal where a consumer was charged $2.95 when his transaction was declined (he claimed there were sufficient funds in his account), then was charged $1.95 when he called to complain.)

But banks are easing off some of those fees thanks to a number of factors — competition being chief among them. Large banks like Chase have jumped into the prepaid market, creating sizable networks for cardholders to enjoy fee-free ATM withdrawals.  Walmart's aggressive steps into the market have helped consumers, too — card holders can deposit money onto cards at ubiquitous Walmart stores for free.

"We are seeing new entrants to the market with some pretty compelling offers," said Greg McBride of Bankrate.com, which recently issued a report about the turnaround in the prepaid debit market. "Over time, this will marginalize the higher-cost offerings that have characterized the prepaid marketplace so far."

That marketplace is expanding, even when some other parts of the plastic card market are shrinking, according to a report from bank consultancy Mercator Group. Gift card purchases dropped slightly from 2011-2012, but reloadable cards that act as pseudo checking accounts were purchased by 14 percent of U.S. consumers in 2012, up from 12 percent in 2011, the Mercator report said. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says $57 billion was loaded onto reloadable cards last year.

Even consumer advocates have noticed the kinder, gentler nature of the reloadable cards, and some even think they are a real alternative for the 10 million U.S. adults who currently don't have a checking or savings account.

"There has been tremendous price compression. We look at the fee schedules for these cards, and it isn't that horrible," said Jennifer Tescher, CEO of the Center for Financial Services Innovation. "We feel like these products are headed in the right direction, that (prepaid cards are) becoming a mainstream product. I am quite excited about the possibilities."

Transparency spurs growth
New prepaid cards come with a long list of benefits once limited to checking account users. Consumers can direct-deposit paychecks onto the cards (and in many cases, avoid monthly fees by doing so). The cards allow holders to make Internet purchases. They can sign up for online banking and pay bills online with the cards. In some cases, they can even write paper checks using the accounts.

McBride links growth in the market to a growing transparency about costs. In the past, consumers were often forced to buy the cards at grocery stores or other retail outlets without being able to see a full list of quirk fees which were sometimes only available online. But newer card issuers have adopted simplified, single monthly fee structures that are winning over consumers.

"The transparency of that one monthly fee is pretty compelling. You can easily quantify what the cost is going to be," McBride said.  Even more compelling — that monthly fee may very well be less than the fee on a low-balance, entry-level, traditional checking account. For example, Bankrate's survey of 24 prepaid card issuers found that 15 had monthly fees ranging from $3-$10. Bank of America's entry-level checking account can cost $12 monthly. (In both cases, monthly fees can be avoided via direct deposit and other ways).

Prepaid debit cards are not a replacement for traditional checking accounts. Most critically, prepaid cards enjoy none of the standard federal consumer protections that credit and debit cards do. There are no refunds for fraud, for example, and there are no dispute resolution requirements. As a result, Internet message boards are full of consumers who complain that money has been stolen or is missing from their card balance, and who say they have no recourse.

Because of the lack of federal protections, prepaid debit card payments are similar to wire transfers — once the money is sent, it's gone — and Internet criminals have taken notice. Cards like the popular Green Dot have become a frequent, and powerfully elusive, way for Net criminals to steal from consumers. Nigerian scammers, for example, no longer need to trick a mark into visiting a Western Union and wiring money overseas. Many now trick victims into buying a Green Dot card instead, and sharing the secret payment code online. The Better Business Bureau, and NBC News' ConsumerMan, issued a warning about this recently.

Consumers also complain about poor customer service when they call to dispute deductions, or when they complain about missing money.

But it appears general purpose reloadable cards are here to stay. They have become popular with government agencies that disburse funds — such as unemployment benefits or tax refunds. Loading a card is safer and cheaper than mailing checks. And while they have a reputation for servicing consumers who are blocked from traditional banking, a growing number of middle-class consumers are using the cards. A report issued last year by the Aite Group says 34 percent of users hold college degrees, and one-third earn more than $45,000 annually.

Red Tape wrestling tips
People use pre-paid debit cards in two very different ways — they should be different products — and it's important to understand the distinction before buying a card.

Short-term purchasers use them as gift cards: To give a college graduate $100 to spend how he or she likes, for example. The card will be used and discarded. For that use, pick a card with low activation fees, even if it has a higher monthly fee. Just advise the recipient to use it quickly. Another slice of consumers use prepaid cards to spend at special events like vacations. They fall into the same category. 

On the other hand, consumers who plan to use prepaid cards as a checking account substitute, and who plan to take advantage of a card's full slate of options — frequent ATM withdrawals, check deposits, etc. — should pay more attention to monthly fees when buying a card. 

Many of these fees are not obvious from the card packaging, so it's worth doing a little research online to pick the best card for your purpose. Consumers Union warns consumers to consider the following potential costs:

• Activation or initiation fees
• Monthly fees
• Point-of-sale transaction fees
• Cash-withdrawal fees
• Balance-inquiry fees
• Fees to receive a paper statement
• Fees to call customer service
• Bill-payment fees
• Fees to add, or “load,” funds
• Dormancy fees for not using your card
• Fees to get your remaining funds back when closing the account
• Overdraft, or “shortage,” fees

Related: 

'Like a drug:' Payday loan users hooked on quick-cash cycle

Follow Bob Sullivan on Facebook or Twitter.

Symantec Corp.

This pop-up screen appears to come from the FBI.

Computer users around the globe are being hit by a new kind of virus that freezes their computer and accuses them of committing heinous crimes, like distributing child porn. The threats sound real enough that victims are coughing up $200 to pay a "fine," and virus writer gangs are netting millions, security firms say.

The message that flashes across infected computer screens sounds downright scary:

"You have been viewing or distributing child porn ... violating article 202 of the Criminal Code of the United States of America," says one version, allegedly sent by the FBI. A virus victim supplied the message to NBC News.

In each case, the accusation appears on a pop-up screen while the virus simultaneously disables the computer. The message often shows the user's IP address and city, and sometimes, recent websites visited by the victim.  The most alarming version activates the victim’s webcam, takes his or her picture, and displays it on the warning.

"They are saying, 'we know who you are, where you are, and what you were doing,'" said John Harrison, a security researcher with Symantec. "They attempt to scare the heck out of you."

The victim is then offered an option: pay a fine within 72 hours, and the charges will be dropped, while the computer will be restored. 

Symantec Corp

In this version of the scam, the virus activates the victim's webcam and displays an image from it on the screen, making the warning even more unnerving

The malicious software is so cleverly crafted that it comes with 30 to 40 versions packed inside. It displays in the appropriate language for victims — English, Spanish, Russian, etc. — and invokes the local federal authorities. A U.S. victim might get a notice from the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center, while a Canadian victim gets one from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The message is fake, of course — and even those who pay the "fine" still have a broken computer. But victims worldwide are falling for it. Harrison said for one version he tracked, roughly 3 percent of victims actually paid up. The criminals behind that virus netted $5 million, Symantec estimates.

With results like that, other virus gangs have been quick to copy the profitable formula. Symantec believes that gangs who spent the past couple of years making money tricking consumers into paying for fake antivirus software have all taken up the fake criminal charges and fine scam.

"So many of these folks have jumped on the bandwagon," Harrison said. "They have really transitioned into this."

The general technique is called ransomware — a virus disables the computer, allegedly holding it hostage until a ransom is paid — and it's not new. But the clever combination of an abrupt interruption, the localization trick, and the severity of the accusation catches many victims unaware, and they let their guard down enough to pay the fine.

There are no hard numbers on the frequency of ransomware, but there's plenty of anecdotal evidence it's on the rise. In February, Europol busted a multi-national crime ring involving a Russian programmer arrested in the United Arab Emirates, and 10 others arrested in Madrid, Spain. There were victims across 30 countries.  Authorities in Spain said 700,000 Spaniards had contacted the government asking for help after becoming infected.

The agency issued another warning about the scam on April 11.

“Fraudsters are deploying extortion techniques using Europol's identity and logo to con EU citizens out of money,” the warning says. “Variations of this con, using the identities of other international and European agencies, are also in circulation.”

It's possible the problem is even worse than security firms realize, because many victims may not be reporting the infection, Harrison said.

"If you were at work and there was a message on your screen that said you were viewing child porn, would you run to get your IT department?" he said.

Most victims pick up the virus by visiting booby-trapped web pages that surreptitiously install software on victims' machines through "drive-by” download, or by downloading free software from disreputable sites.  In fact, some variations of the virus accuse victims of violating copyright law, knowing that is likely true.

Victims shouldn't pay the fine, Harrison said, but they should know that various software tools — including free tools available at Symantec — can rid their machines of the virus.

Follow Bob Sullivan on Facebook or Twitter.

A stock market and a nation already on edge was temporarily knocked off its axis on Tuesday by a single fake tweet. 

Following a hack attack, the Associated Press' verified Twitter account posted "an erroneous tweet" claiming that two explosions occurred in the White House and that President Barack Obama is injured. Moments later, the @AP Twitter account — with nearly 2 million followers — was suspended.

"That's a bogus tweet," an AP spokesperson initially told NBC News, a statement that was repeated by the company's corporate communications account. Though the false tweet disappeared, the false message continued to exist on the service in over 4,000 retweets.

The chart of the Dow Jones industrial average just after 1 p.m. may as well have been a chart of America's heartbeat -- stopped for a moment, again, by seemingly horrific information. The Dow lost more than 140 points almost instantly, before recovering five minutes later.

It's incredible what a single 12-word lie can do.

"We're in an environment where we're sensitive to any news that sounds like terrorism," said Art Hogan of Lazard Capital Markets.  "That makes it that much more believable. That's the tricky part. When something like AP gets hacked, it becomes reality for a period of time, until it's not."

The market's reaction hints at the our collective fragility right now.  In the past, carefully crafted fake press releases or other Internet disinformation has been able to influence individual stocks both up or down.

But a single Tweet sinking the market?  It's just the latest sign that lies now spread on the Internet as fast as computer viruses, and can have just as much impact. Like the false rumors that spread like wildfire during the Boston bombing aftermath, or Hurricane Sandy before that, Twitter's surge to mainstream popularity — it now boasts 140 million U.S. accounts — has made it an incredible source of on-the-spot information, but also the world's most powerful rumor-mongering tool.

"You wonder who did it and whether it was done on purpose. It certainly was an instant implosion," said Art Cashin, director of floor operations for UBS Financial Services, who watched the minutes of bedlam on the floor of the NYSE. Cashin said the reaction was especially dramatic because it said the president was injured.

If you define the term "hacking" loosely, you might consider that whoever wrote the fake tweet hacked not only AP's account, but the entire Wall Street trading system. The trades which sank the market Tuesday were almost certainly initiated by automated trading programs designed to profit by fast-twitch reacting to good or bad news.

The combination of a jittery public, automated trading, and a worldwide rumor tool was toxic for the markets.

"That goes to show you how algorithms read headlines and create these automatic orders — you don't even have time to react as a human being," said Kenny Polcari of O'Neil Securities. "I'd imagine the (Security and Exchange Commission) is going to look into how this happened. It's not about banning computers, but it's about protection and securing our markets."

It's also about figuring out how to handle a world where the firewall between seemingly disconnected systems like Twitter and brokerage servers is really only 91 characters long, particularly a world where skepticism’s classic grains of salt seem to be in short supply.

CNBC's JeeYeon Park, Patti Domm and John Melloy contributed to this story.

Related: AP Twitter account hacked, posts false White House scare

Nicolas Asfouri / AFP - Getty Images

A woman checks her smartphone in this file image.

If you use your personal smartphone or tablet to read work email, your company may have to seize the device some day, and you may not get it back for months.

Employees armed with a battery of smartphones and other gadgets they own are casually connecting to work email and other employer servers. It's a less-than-ideal security arrangement that technology pros call BYOD — bring your own device.

Now, lawyers are warning there's an unforeseen consequence of BYOD. If a company is involved in litigation — civil or criminal — personal cellphones that were used for work email or other company activity are liable to be confiscated and examined for evidence during discovery or investigation.

It's a possibility even technology pros rarely consider, said Michael R. Overly, a technology law expert in Los Angeles.

"You would be very surprised to hear that even extremely sophisticated business people seem shocked when they learn their personal phone, including email, GPS data, photos ... may be subject to review in litigation involving their employer," Overly said.

BYOD is a worldwide reality and a dramatic shift in the way companies outfit their employees with work tools. Cisco Systems Inc. released a report earlier this year saying 42 percent of all "knowledge workers" own the smartphones they use for work, and two-thirds of companies expect the employee-owned device phenomenon to increase.

Hidden cost
The convenience is hard to ignore, as is the personal touch — workers love picking their own phones — but of course, cost savings is the real driving force. Increasingly, companies are requiring workers to supply their own gadgets at their own cost, the way a restaurant might require waiters to purchase their own uniforms.

Even if companies reimburse those employees, there can be a big hidden cost for workers — the possibility of losing their phone for days or months while their company combs through it for data relevant to legal action.

“People’s lives revolve around their phone, and they are going to become more and more of a target in litigation,” Overly said. “Employees really do need to understand that .”

Giri Sreenivas, a mobile phone security expert at Boston-area firm Rapid7, warned discovery requirements can extend far beyond email stored on smartphones.

"Text messages and cellphone records might be subject to discovery, too, even if you never connected to company email," he said.  "If lawyers believe the device was used for work purposes, it can be (taken).”

Race to keep up
How could firms gain the right to rummage through the most personal items on worker’s phones — pictures, texts, social media accounts?  In many cases, it’s not a right, it’s a duty, says Overly. When a company is sued, and required to produce documents as part of a discovery process, it must make a good-faith effort to retrieve data — wherever it may be. That includes employee-owned gadgets. 

In fact, Overly says he was part of a case recently where a judge sanctioned a company for a discovery violation because it failed to search BYOD devices during discovery. He declined to name the case.

Companies are racing to keep up with the trend — trying to set policies, inform workers of their rights, and superimpose BYOD rules over arrangements that organically evolved within their workplaces. Increasingly, companies are requiring workers to sign agreements that alert them to the potential of personal gadget seizure, Overly said.

Christopher Dahl runs a Seattle-based firm that specializes in digital document retrieval for lawyers called Lighthouse eDiscovery. While he says industry discussion is dominated by talk of BYOD discovery, he said gadget seizure has not become common — yet.

"We see mobile devices infrequently. We only had one come in last month," Dahl said. "It's typically pretty rare where the company can't get the same information from another location. Companies will have to disclose that the information is on that second location (the smartphone) but typically don't have to dig into that second place."  

Red Tape wrestling tips
Workers wary of having their personal phone nabbed can carry two phones – one personal and one for work – but even that’s not fool-proof. An occasional connection from the personal phone to work email can make the phone subject to discovery. Going this route requires diligent work and personal separation.

"The No. 1 thing you can do to ensure your device is not subject to seizure is to remove any sort of company account ... and then inform the company it's been removed," said Sreenivas.

Dahl warned about accidental blending of personal and work data through a seemingly innocent USB charge connection that leads to accidental synching of data. 

There may be a technology solution to this problem in the future. The newest Blackberry phone claims to create a work data-personal data divide, which has the potential to limit the searches that might be conducted by company lawyers

Follow Bob Sullivan on Facebook or Twitter.

Cellphone users annoyed by costly text spam or unexpected fees have hope: The Federal Trade Commission filed its first ever case against so-called "mobile crammers" on Wednesday.

In a complaint filed in a Georgia federal court, the FTC is alleging that Wise Media sent consumers text message spam and signed them up for $9.99-per-month "premium" text services with horoscopes, flirting tips and other unwanted information.

The FTC is seeking a permanent injunction against the company's alleged unfair trade practices and a freeze of the company's assets.

"Wise Media and its operators have taken advantage of the fact that consumers may not expect their mobile phone bills to contain charges from third parties and that Wise Media’s charges appear on bills in an abbreviated manner that does not always clearly designate the company as the source of the charge," the FTC said in its statement. "As a result, many consumers didn’t notice or understand the charges and paid the bills."

Complaints against Wise Media began to appear online as early as April of 2012. The firm is not accredited by the Better Business Bureau, thought its Atlanta office has received 26 complaints since last year — nearly all billing related — though it says those complaints have been “closed.”

Attempts to contact Wise Media were unsuccessful. Callers who dialed its Atlanta phone number on Wednesday heard a message saying the number had been changed to an unlisted number.

The FTC says Wise Media has been hard to reach in the past.

"The Commission alleges that Wise Media went to great lengths to hide its contact information from consumers. When consumers victimized by the scam were able to find a phone number for Wise Media, its call center employees frequently promised refunds that were never provided," it said.

Cramming is a decade-old trick to place third-party charges on consumers' telephone bills without their knowledge. Despite Congressional hearings on the issue, which is among U.S. consumers' biggest beefs, telecom providers continue to have trouble stopping crammers.

A report by Sen. Jay Rockefeller's office in 2011 found that consumers lose $2 billion annually to cramming.

Mobile phone cramming is relatively new, however. As consumer phone bills become more confusing, and as smartphones become more powerful, the risks to consumers have grown quickly. NBC News recently described cell phone attacks that could cost consumers thousands of dollars and net criminals millions.

Cramming doesn't require hacking, however.  It can be as simple as a third party company telling a telecom provider to add the charge to a consumer's bill. While telecom providers say they require third-party firms to get consumers' consent, consumers often complain that doesn't occur.

“As more and more consumers move to mobile phones, scammers have adapted to this new technology, and the Commission will continue its efforts to protect consumers from their unlawful practices,” said FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez.

Red Tape wrestling tips
Consumers who receive an unexpected text message — such as notification that they've won a contest — should ignore the message and carefully check the following month's bills for unwanted charges.  They can also look up the number at a website called SMS Watchdog, which tracks potential mobile phone spam. Consumers should also consider calling their cell service provider and turning off “premium text message” services.

Follow Bob Sullivan on Facebook or Twitter.

Paul Sakuma / AP, file

Signs advertising bad credit auto loans, in this 2008 file photo.

You probably know you have a credit score, and that score dictates much of your financial future. You might know you have three credit scores, thanks to aggressive advertising from companies that sell access to them.

However, those hardly scratch the surface of the collection of credit scores lenders might use to judge you.  There are, most likely, dozens of scores that might control your ability to get a mortgage, buy a car or obtain insurance.  

Banks often use their own scores, tweaked versions of the FICO score that began the credit score craze. Auto lenders also have their own scores. So do car insurers. And old scores, based on old formulas, are still in use by many lenders.  U.S. consumers may have 50 different credit scores -- or more -- that could impact their ability to borrow money, and that number is rising, experts say.

"The idea of there being a one true credit score, well that's just not accurate," said Michael Schreiber, editor in chief at Credit.Com, a consumer advice website.

John Ulzheimer, a credit score expert who formerly worked for FICO score inventor Fair Isaac Corp., produced a detailed infographic for CreditSesame.com in September which detailed 49 different scores based on the FICO. He has found another five or six since them. And that number doesn't include competitors like Vantage Score, invented by the credit bureaus in an attempt to cut out Fair Isaac, or other proprietary kinds of credit scores. 

"Getting your actual credit score is a like game of roulette at this point," said Ulzheimer, now president of consumer education at SmartCredit.com. "Getting the wrong number can be overwhelming to a consumer. The lender is using one score but you don't know which score."

There are also exotic credit-based scores, such as a "revenue score," which predicts how much interest revenue a credit card holder will generate; a bankruptcy score indicating the likelihood someone will file for legal relief of debts; and a collection score that helps debt collectors prioritize their efforts.

Credit scores were once held completely in secret by the credit industry, but are more available to the public today. Credit monitoring services include them with monthly subscriptions. Fair Isaac, the inventor of the credit score, sells FICO scores at MyFico.com. Wells Fargo gives them away to consumers who walk in and ask about new accounts. Credit.com gives away a free score to site visitors. But with more scores being invented all the time, it's hard to say what consumers are looking at when they receive a credit score.

"It does irk people when they find out there's a very different number they get from one scoring model to another," said Gerri Detweiler, scoring expert at Credit.com. "People wonder, 'What good is it to check my score if the score banks see is different?'"

If any credit score provider implies consumers are getting a comprehensive view of their creditworthiness by ordering three credit scores -- based on their three credit reports at Equifax, Trans Union, and Experian -- that's misleading, Detweiler said. It's also misleading for any firm to suggest their score is the one used by most lenders.

Ulzheimer think so, too.

"If you go to MyFico and you get a score, that is the same brand of score that lenders are using predominantly," said Ulzheimer. "Going past that is an embellishment. … MyFico does sell you a FICO score, but it may not be the same FICO score that lenders use."

In fact, many banks have their own scores, which sprinkle their own criteria into the complex algorithm.  Car loan issuers, for example, often choose to weigh previous car loan payment history higher than other lenders, Detweiler said.

The proliferation of scores is partly the result of continuous updates to scoring formulas that are expensive for financial institutions to adopt, Ulzheimer said. 

"Scores are really nothing more than generations of software," he said. "Think of how many generations of Microsoft software are out there, for example.  Every year, there's something new that's a little better but kind of does the same thing.  Scoring systems are like that."

For example: Last week, the group behind the Vantage scoring system announced VantageScore 3.0. It has some consumer-friendly features, such as ignoring collections accounts that have been paid off (such accounts generally lower a consumer's FICO score), and providing exceptions for consumers who don't pay bills because of natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy. But firms may continue to use VantageScore 2.0 for a long time.

"A large bank that didn't want to update its systems could force providers to keep old scoring systems going for years," Ulzheimer said.

Given the proliferation of scores, should consumers even bother trying to see one of their credit scores?  Absolutely, says Detweiler. She says any score will offer a helpful reference point.

"Don't focus so much on the number as much as what direction you are moving," she says. "The number will give you some information about what areas of your financial life you need to work on.  But if there is a drop, you will know something significant has happened."

The number itself doesn't matter as much as how a consumer compares to the general population, she said. Armed with this information, consumers should be able to ensure they are getting a fair interest rate when borrowing money for a home or a car or applying for a credit card.  Consumers who rank near the top of a scoring scale should get a bank's best rate.

Because she thinks consumers should track their score over time, Detweiler says it's important to stick with the same score than trying to compare a free score doled out by a bank with another score purchased from a website.

Ulzheimer said it's fruitless and frustrating for consumers to obsessively follow their credit scores as they pop up and down, given that lenders see different scores anyway. He recommends "managing" to your credit report instead of your credit score, since the report is at the heart of all score formulas.

"What's constant across all scores is that doing the right thing will lead to a better score across the board,” he said. “If you pay your bills on time, your scores will go up. So worry about that. Managing to three credit reports is easier than trying to manage all those credit scores. ...Consumers have to let go of that, because the number of scores will continue to get larger, not smaller."

That's not to suggest variations among credit scores aren't important. In September, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau published a study of credit scores revealing that variations among different scoring models could impact as consumer's borrowing costs about 20 percent of the time.

The study recommended that firms that sell credit scores "should make consumers aware that the scores consumers purchase could vary, sometimes substantially, from the scores used by creditors."

The best way to avoid paying too much for credit because of a credit score variation is to shop around. Never take the auto dealer's word for it that they've gotten you the best deal on your car loan.  The variations matter less with mortgages, where banks usually get three credit scores and throw out the lowest and higher score.

Detweiler said for personal sanity, consumers should avoid treating credit scores the way they treated SAT scores in high school, or grade point averages in college.

"Don't get too hung up on a number," she said.  "You know the serenity prayer? There are some things you have control over, and some you don't. Take care of the things you can control, like paying your bills, and the score will take care of itself." 

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