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Take a look in your spam email folder. Especially your free internet emails. You may have won a few lotteries, giveaways or even a fortune from a dead billionaire.
I don’t think my readers care to open those emails. Chances are there that average internet users find this article via search. Given that 100s of internet users are falling victim of online scams is customary that not everyone is aware of scams that happen over the internet.
If you’re one of them that think money can be made easily online, let me tell you unless you have a luck that stinks, you can’t go on winning money like that. So, don’t bother to open junk emails. Just clear your junk mail folder.
Even your bank shouldn’t ask you to verify credentials via email with a link (apart from establishing your email id when you sign-up). At most, they’ll ask you to re-verify credentials when you log into their website. So every email that asks you to change email/password is from fraudsters. and yes, there are scams involving donations and charity, beware of them as well.
In most cases of online scams, people are either careless or ignorant. That is the reason they are cheated quite easily. Following are 10 effective ways to protect yourself from being cheated in such scams and frauds:
1) Never send money to unknown internet friends – Many times we send money through the internet to friends who are in need of money. But we should never send money to an unknown friend online without first verifying their condition over phone or in-person.
Many times people create fake accounts and ask others to send money to their accounts with falsifying economic states. Even emails accounts get hacked very often.
2) Never give your personal information – Never give your personal information to any unknown internet friend as they may harass you and ask you to give them some money threatening you about giving your information to anyone else. Beware of cute girls/boys in internet chat rooms. Do not disclose your identity before talking to them over the phone.
If your social network profile has a contact address or phone number, etc. Do remove them or classify them as private information.
3) Attachments in email – Never download attachments email without scanning for viruses. Viruses and phishing software can easily be attached to emails. If you download blindly, you compromise with the security. Attachments in the unsolicited mail should always be opened with caution.
4) Never believe in stories – There are many people who ask you to send money to their account in the name of giving you free products or lottery tickets or any such things. Never believe in such stories, almost always they are scams. The best way of finding out whether a story is true is that the story is easily believable.
You can’t win lotteries over the internet, and you can’t inherit property from someone you don’t know in a distant country. Even if you faithfully believe in a story, if you are required to send an upfront personal information or money to the senders to receive greater benefits, then its sure a scam in the making, Step aside, back-out and report.
5) Never click unknowingly – Most of the phishing emails would have you click on a link to log into your one of the accounts (sometimes in accounts you aren’t aware of. Don’t just look at what’s visible on your screen. Mouse over the links and see what the real URLs are.
6) Change your password from time to time – If you don’t change your password from time to time your account may get hacked and the hacker may steal your personal information. Another thing is that, that the hacker may misuse your account to send emails to other account and threaten other people using your name.
7) Lack of personal details – The easiest way to find a fake email is the sender will send you to email in the name of some bank, organization, etc. and will never mention your name in the email. This is because the sender does not have your personal information as he chooses your email randomly or from a list of emails and so he cannot mention your name.
8) Internet shopping – Never buy things out of email offers you receive. Not talking about email subscription you knowingly enrolled in. My wife has weekly email alerts from Macy’s and JC Penny’s etc. Make unsolicited selling pitch a warning sign. To be on the safe side make it a point not to buy from those emails, not even that attractive looking earrings!
9) Never log into your financial account from an unknown network – When you log into your email or social networking account from a public WiFi, do check browser’s lock icon to make sure you are logged on to genuine account, do this before entering user id/password.
There is simple software that can record keystrokes when activated. When using a public computer, especially at your doctor’s office, hotel or airports, Do not log on to financial accounts. These software store username and password on hidden text files for the owner to download.
10) Take help from experts – You should take help or seek advice from experts about internet scams and frauds and ways to prevent them. You may ask them which websites are secure, whether the person who in contact is a fake person, which emails are fake, which information should not be given including your personal information, etc.
What if you are already a victim and now want to find a way out of the mess? Know your rights, and take action accordingly. Internet scams generally involve fraud by foreign nationals. Your options are limited in this case. so, prevention is the best cure for online scams. Still, there are some ways to fight on when you’re scammed already.
- File police complaint if you have monetary loss
- Contact your financial institution immediately, consult with them if you should close the current account and reopen another.
- File claim with Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and seek help from their identity theft division.
- Contact fraud departments of three major credit bureaus, Experian, Equifax, and Transunion.
- Initiate process for getting new ID documents, like Driver’s License, passport or state ID, etc.
One last bit of advice, if you want to protect your friends/family from being scammed, do inform everyone if your email account is compromised and taken over by scammers. Help others avoid scams too.
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I strongly agree with your advice to file a police report if you’ve lost money. $2,500 was fraudulently transferred online from my business checking account. Fortunately, I monitor my account frequently. When I noticed the transaction, I notified my bank and was able to get the money back. Nevertheless, I also filed a police report, and it is a good thing I did! Two years latter I was contracted by a collection agency who tried to collect that $2,500 from me as a debt owed. Providing the police report got them off my back.
For number four I’ve been hearing a lot about this scam on craigslist…people are looking for a house, find one, and then the owner says we’re not in the area, but fill out our “application” which is actually just a bunch of questions to obtain personal info, send us the deposit, and we’ll send you the key. No good.
Number eight is so great, too. I wouldn’t typically do this anyways, but to be honest I’ve never really thought about it when it’s from companies I trust.
I think people are generally immune to most email spam (not everyone though.) Personally, I find the most ingenious scams on Craigslist. The little buggers have the most conniving plots that many seem like the real deal. It can’t hurt writing about scams over and over since it seems like someone is always falling for a new type of scam every day. Also, really tricky scams like clickjacking and adware are a big pain in the …
#1 can be tricky. But I guess there is a fine line between giving money and buying something. I once was paid $100 to write a guest post for an internet friend, largely because I needed the $100 to pay for a conference I wanted to attend.
$100 not bad! I am willing to offer a whole $0 🙂 But seriously, if you’d ever like to post on my blog you’re more than welcome to, even though I can’t afford $100 to give away like that 🙁
Veronica, I’ll be sure to take you up on that offer as soon as I can. I’ve only ever been paid for 2 guest posts and the other was was for a competition (and paid much, much less).
I look forward to it.
Last year, a friend went to Europe for a short holiday. After a few days, some of our friends, including me and my husband, received an email from her asking for some amount to be sent to her so that she can return home. The email said her bag was stolen and all her cards and cash were inside the bag. What made me doubt the email was the manner the message was composed. It was not the typical friendly tone she uses during our conversations and email exchanges. Besides, we knew that she will be staying with her daughter and son-in-law during the entire vacation. Hence, we called her husband and verified the veracity of the message. It was made clear that her email was hacked and password was stolen. Another lesson learned for everybody.
I actually like to look at my spam inbox to read the titles, Rich Asian singles, big black beauties, gay singles. Too bad I’m married. I’ve never opened one, but I have had friends who’ve been hacked and you get emails from their address with a weird link. A friend actually clicked one and got her hard drive erased. So, yes tell your contacts if you get hacked.
I was receiving pornographic content on Facebook timeline from one of the closest friends. Later we realized her account was hacked in. No other damages were done but, her reputation suffered initially.
It’s sad that we’re in 2012 and it’s still relevant to discuss ways you can get scammed on the internet — people are far too trusting.
I got a very real looking email from PayPal recently and nearly was fooled. But I wasn’t fooled when Mr. Florence Smith wanted to leave me $5M dollars from her estate. I’m way too much of an #%@^ for that to ever happen!
When I was selling on Craigslist recently, I had all kinds of folks who were trying to scam me. At least three different folks sent me similar stories saying that they were out of town but wanted the product for their son, and would send me a money order for that amount plus a convenience fee.. After researching their story, it is a very common scam.
We try to be as careful as we can with sharing information. It sure has gotten hard though as more and more daily activity is getting done online. Even newsletters, shopping, work stuff is online now which all requires accounts, user info, and passwords. We can try all we want to protect ourselves, but nothing is 100% safe and we need to realize that.
Great post, I am very cautious with my browsing since i was hacked 3 years ago. A guy just withdrew $2000 from my paypal and sent it somewhere in Asia. I know coz we traced it but its all too late then. Now i subscribed to a forum alert site where any news and latest activities on online scams and fraud gets discussed. Also be warned, be careful with what you like and link on Facebook and Twitter or any other social media because scammers lurk in there most often to fish for your infos like email and passwords.
The term “Internet Scams” commonly refers to any sort of scam scheme that uses a single or much far more on the net services to present fraudulent solicitations to prospective victims, to conduct fraudulent transactions, or to transmit the proceeds of fraud to monetary institutions or to others connected making use of the structure. this web can makes it effortless for us to establish which websites are credible and who are scams.
Thanks for the great list. We’ve been looking into setting up a payment gateway and I was looking for exactly this type of information. We deal with so many fraudulent request that it’s going to take a risk free solution (which doesn’t exist in my book) to commit to accepting payments online.