Tips for avoiding student loan repayment scams

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- After a three-year pause, student loan borrowers will have to start making payments again in less than a week.

But experts warn related scams are on the rise.

The FTC warns that scammers are calling, texting and emailing borrowers, falsely claiming their student loan debt can be reduced or canceled altogether for a fee.

"They'll tell you they can get forgiveness in a shorter amount of time than might be available, that your payments are going toward your student loans. They might claim to be part of the Department of Education," explained Katherine Aizpuru of the FTC.

But typically those forgiveness programs are bogus.

Robocall tracking company Transaction Network Services (TNS) says it's monitoring about 100,000 student loan spam calls every week.

"We've seen a big uptick. In the last three weeks probably we've seen more calls in the last three weeks than we have in the last three months," said Jim Tyrrell of TNS.

Red flags to pay attention to include scammers asking you to pay for their debt relief services upfront or calls and texts asking for your personal information, like your federal student aid or FSA login.

"You want to treat your FSA ID like your social security number. You want to keep that to yourself. You don't want to give that out," said Aizpuru.

If you have questions about your loan payments, reach out directly to your servicer. If you don't know who your servicer is, you can find that information for free on studentaid.gov.

And if you do get one of those spam calls, hang up before giving away any of your personal information.

Or better yet, don't answer at all.