The Different Types of Internet Scam

If you frequently surf the Net, you'll have probably stumbled upon countless ads and pages promising you will earn incredible sums with no or very low effort in exchange for paying a small sum to join their programs. Maybe some of them were so promising that you actually ended up paying their affiliation fee, only to find out, hours or months later, they'd never give you the return they promised.

Spotting an internet scam can be hard at first, but once you've understood the mechanisms, you'll see the schemes used by scammers are always the same, only with small occasional differences. This article lists the main types of Internet scam, to make it easier for you to spot them and immediately avoid them (and possibly take action to alert authorities) when you come across one.

IDENTITY THEFT

The term 'identity theft' commonly refers to the act of acquiring personal information about you, which can be later be used without your permission. Identity theft schemes include:

a) Stolen Credit Card

Credit card information can be obtained in many ways, the simplest being copying information from retailers, either online or offline. There have been many reported cases of crackers obtaining huge quantities of credit card information from companies' databases. Despite the claims of the credit card industry and merchants, using credit cards for online purchases is not totally secure and still carries a certain amount of risk. Even the so called "secure transactions" are not fully trushworthy, since the information needs to be decrypted to plain text in order for it to be processed. This is one of the points where credit card information is typically stolen.

b) Getting Wire Transfer Info

Some fraudsters approach merchants asking them for large quotes. After they quickly accept the merchant's quote, they ask for wire transfer information to send payment. Immediately, they use online check issuing systems as Qchex that require nothing but a working email, to produce checks that they use to pay other merchants or simply send associates to cash them.

MONEY TRANSFERS FRAUD

This type of Fraud consists of an employment offer to help transfer money to a foreign company, supposedly because it costs too much to do it through other methods (which is usually not the case). Other times, you are sent an e-mail from a total stranger stating he received a check in a foreign value he can't cash, offering you to cash '1000' at his place and send him back '400' in advance, keeping the rest -- where the check is obviously a fake. Such schemes are easy to spot because they're highly unlikely in real life, but unluckily some still fall for them.

PHISHING

The term 'phishing' refers to the act of trying to acquire sensitive information like passwords or credit card numbers, often via email. A typical phishing scheme is to send an e-mail pretending to be the bank or money-related service used by you, trying to get the user to log in. The links in the email doesn't actually bring to the original vendor site, but to a clone site owner by the scammer, who is recording all fields entered when logging in the site. One of the most common types of phising involves e-Bay related messages.

PONZI, PYRAMID AND MATRIX SCHEMES

Ponzi, pyramid and matrix schemes are all very similar unsustainable business models that involves the exchange of money primarily for enrolling other people into the scheme, usually without any product or service actually being delivered. When the cycle involves enough people who have invested in the program (or when the program itself has 'saturated'), the scammers will disappear with all the money of the latest investors. Some people look at such schemes as a form of gambling (trying to invest on them even if they know they are scams, betting on the fact the system won't 'saturate' while their money is invested), however this behavior is often considered barely legal, and in many occasions explicitly forbidden by law.

A final rule of thumb to spot scams: if it sounds too good to be true... then it's too good to be true!

What should you do when you find out about a scam site, or you get scammed yourself? Your first resort should be to alert local police. But the fastest and most effective way to prevent the scammers from fooling someone else is probably to alert their payment system provider (e.g. PayPal) asking to suspend all transactions from and to the account you sent the money to. Every online payment system will take such inquiries with a great deal of seriousness (they don't want to be associated with scammers) and soon the scammers will be out of business.

Check out more articles from this author here: http://wysinnwyg.altervista.org
Thanks : Johnny Mendel, http://www.pc-computer-repair.co.uk

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Their Phishing For Your Identity

Who hasn't received an email directing them to visit a familiar website where they are being asked to update their personal information? The website needs you to verify or update your passwords, credit card numbers, social security number, or even your bank account number. You recognize the business name as one that you’ve conducted business with in the past. So, you click on the convenient "take me there" link and proceed to provide all the information they have requested. Unfortunately, you find out much later that the website is bogus. It was created with the sole intent to steal your personal information. You, my friend, have just been "phished".

Phishing (pronounced as "fishing") is defined as the act of sending an email to a recipient falsely claiming to have an established, legitimate business. The intent of the phisher is to scam the recipient into surrendering their private information, and ultimately steal your identity.

It is not at easy as you think to spot an email phishing for information. At first glance, the email may look like it is from a legitimate company. The "From" field of the e-mail may have the .com address of the company mentioned in the e-mail. The clickable link even appears to take you to the company's website, when in fact, it is a fake website built to replicate the legitimate site.

Many of these people are professional criminals. They have spent a lot of time in creating emails that look authentic. Users need to review all emails requesting personal information carefully. When reviewing your email remember that the "From Field" can be easily changed by the sender. While it may look like it is coming from a .com you do business with, looks can be deceiving. Also keep in mind that the phisher will go all out in trying to make their email look as legitimate as possible. They will even copy logos or images from the official site to use in their emails. Finally, they like to include a clickable link that the recipient can follow to conveniently update their information.



A great way to check the legitimacy of the link is to point at the link with your mouse.Then, look in the bottom left hand screen of your computer. The actual website address to which you are being directed will show up for you to view. It is a very quick and easy way to check if you are being directed to a legitimate site.

Finally, follow the golden rule. Never, ever, click the links within the text of the e-mail, and always delete the e-mail immediately. Once you have deleted the e-mail, empty the trash box in your e-mail accounts as well. If you are truly concerned that you are missing an important notice regarding one of your accounts, then type the full URL address of the website into your browser. At least then you can be confident that you are, in fact, being directed to the true and legitimate website.

Thanks : Johnny Mendel, http://www.pc-computer-repair.co.uk

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Can You Stop Spam Emails?

Are you having problems with Spam emails, like thousands of us we receive a few spam emails everyday in our email account. But if you don’t have any spam email protection you are more likely to receive hundreds of spam emails every week, so what can you do about this?

The first thing to do is to get anti-spam software installed on your computer this does help alot and can prevent you from receiving the hundreds of spam emails you don’t want. Most email accounts now have anti-spam software included but there are some when this is not an option, you just have to press the Junk button when you receive junk emails this does reduce them but no where as much as other email account operators. An account like AOL has anti-spam software on your email account so when and if you do receive spam emails they go directly into the Spam box. This is a good thing but you do have to check if frequently as some emails that aren’t spam do make there way into the spam box, the easy thing to do it click on the email and click on the button Not Spam, this tells AOL that it isn’t spam and from then onwards that email address will turn up in your email inbox not your spam box. This is called email filtering and accounts like Hotmail, Yahoo and Google all use this kind of software to help their users get the most out of their email account.

Microsoft Outlook 2003 and 2007 have an automatic spam protection which catches spam and places into a junk email box, this sometimes can catch regular emails too but it defiantly helps you would just need to check the spam box.

Other ways to help you stop unwanted spam getting into your email account inbox is to choose a long email address which is a combination of letters and numbers with punctuation marks. Don’t click on links on spam emails as this will allow more spam to affect you, as well as don’t open spam attachments, don’t reply to spam emails, only give your main email address to your friends and family and don’t post it on your own website or on internet directories, don’t buy products, services or donate to charity via spam emails if more people take this action the less spammers will send, if you use a spam filter report spam that gets to your inbox so the filter can block it as spam next time one is sent and finally if you do have junk spam folders check them regularly as some regular email may get through.

If you take the precautions shown above you have a very good chance of reducing the spam reaching your regular inbox, the more people who do this and everyone doesn’t respond to the spam emails, links and attachments the more likely spammers are to stop sending these spam emails. We all need to fight spam today!!!

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