The Toledo area’s Better Business Bureau has set up a text-alert system for scams and frauds.

Dick Eppstein, president of the BBB branch that covers Monroe, Lenawee, and Hillsdale counties in Michigan and 15 counties in northwest Ohio, said the alert system was created at the suggestion last year of an Adrian consumer who said she rarely checks email.

The system flags emails, social-media posts, and other messages that contain, among other things, fraudulent pitches designed to get recipients to disclose personal information that the scammers then sell.

The text alerts are free and may be activated by texting the word “START” to 95577, the BBB said while promising that no signup information is shared with anyone else.

First Published January 31, 2021, 8:06 p.m.