Fight Scams Blog

Welcome to Fight Scams Blog

2018-12-18T03:01:00.000-08:00

The term "Internet fraud" generally refers to any type of fraud scheme that uses one or more online services to present fraudulent solicitations to prospective victims, to conduct fraudulent transactions, or to transmit the proceeds of fraud to financial institutions or to others connected with the scheme. Internet fraud can take place on computer programs such as chat rooms, e-mail, message boards, or Web sites. (from Wikipédia)

Internet scams are a very serious problem and are increasing in number and "quality", and the numbers of scams, money lost, and people scammed are growing dramatically every day, destroying homes, lives and families. Although there are no accurate statistics on Internet fraud, experts all agree that numbers are staggering.

We are aware that there sites talking about this subject but is never too much talk about it, don´t be silent or ashamed. Telling others is the best weapon against scammers. There are so many kinds of scams. We decide to make this blog to give our contribution and help people protect themselves against Internet frauds. I worked in a internet dsl help desk center and I was astonished how people fall in scams so easily. Internet like everything in life has 2 aspects, positive and negative. It seems people are aware of the positive things like communication, research, buying and so many other points, but in what concerns the dangers as far as we can see people are not aware of it. So we will try to give you some guidance and don´t forget always use common sense.

Never believe in internet "miracles" to be millionaire is some days, or to find the women of your dreams in a week and so on.

I also was scammed with pay to click websites: clicking hours and hours in advertisements for months and more than 90 per cent of that sites never send me the money for my efforts, what a waste of time...but this kind of scams we may say are small type, with no other consequences more than wasting time, but there are others well so serious that a person can have problems with the law or lost a fortune for example.

I will publish my own experiences in detail about it. So if you were scammed and want to publish your story just let us know we will publish it here for all to know and prevent someone to fall in the same scheme.

It seems common sense and talk about it this way is the best way to fight against scammers.

Scams: frauds, dating scams, email scam, online, credit card frauds, indentity theft and son many other types....

Next page: Some Types of Scams

Blog Índex

2017-12-22T10:42:00.000-08:00

Contact

2015-01-03T02:45:00.000-08:00

Contact Form (email us)

FBI E-mail Alert Scam

2010-02-03T01:20:00.000-08:00

This is another in a series of e-mail scams Don't believe it Keep your money ... email scams FBI alert "email scams"

Internet Home Business Opportunities Scams

2010-02-03T01:17:00.000-08:00

Scam Listings For 900+

Flash Animation www.makecashnow.biz Home Business Membership Website now offers a list of over 900 online internet home business opportunity and work at home scams, frauds, cons, and rip-offs. Internet Home Business Scam Categories include: Scam Business Owners/Scam Gurus, Email/Domain/Rebate Processing Jobs, Data Entry Typing/Type At Home Programs, Get Paid Taking Surveys Programs, Private Cash Gifting Activity Programs, Auto Surf/Paid Surfing Programs, Online Investment Schemes, Internet Marketing Schemes, Stuffing Envelopes/Mailing Flyers Schemes, HYIP/High Yield Investment Plan Programs, Real Estate Investing Courses, Paid To Shop/Home Shopping Jobs, Network Marketing, MLM/Multi-Level Network Marketing, Home Business Opportunity Programs and Forex - Trading Systems / Trade Strategies. The Largest listing of work from home and home based business scams on the internet!

Identity Theft summary

2010-01-01T03:47:00.000-08:00

A Basic Guide and a Summary on Identity Theft

What is Identity Theft? Identity theft is a crime in which a certain person uses another person's information or identity in ways that involve fraud or deception, typically for their economic gain. They do this by using someone else identity instead of providing the correct and real information for their identities. And because of this actions the person, whose identity was wrongfully used by others, will suffer from financial hardships.
Today, identity theft is the fastest growing crime in the United States. All people whose identity is in the hand of other people are all at risk of identity theft, so basically, everyone is at risk. That is why identity theft protection is very useful nowadays.
In the United States alone, an average of 27,000 people is being pilfered of their identities daily. And according to studies made by the Identity Theft Resource Center, for every second a person's identity is being stolen. And for every three seconds, a person's identity would be exposed to thieves.

There are different types of identity theft, giving enough reason for everyone to get identity theft protection. Here are the different types of identity theft:

The first is the Driver's License Identity Theft. In this manner of stealing someone's identity, the victim can be subjected to traffic violations he did not permit.

The second is Credit Identity Theft. Here the theft uses someone else's personal information to acquire loans, and thus leaving the victim paying bills for the loans he or she is not enjoying.

The third type of identity theft and third reason to get identity theft protection is the Social Security Number Identity Theft. Using another person's Social security Number, the thief would apply for a job. The thief would get the salary for that job, but the victim would be the one to pay for the taxes.

The fourth is the Medical Identity Theft. The thief would use another person's identity for consultations, prescriptions, and treatments, in other words, the victims insurance would be used by the thief, making the victim to lose his or her insurance coverage.

Lastly is the fifth type of identity theft and another reason to get identity theft protection is the Character Identity Theft. In this type of identity theft involves crimes. The person, whose identity was used, will be subjected to subpoena and will be charged of crimes he or she did not commit.
And in addition to these types of identity theft everyone should be aware of, everyone should also be aware that the most common way of identity theft is through the internet.

Downloaded files like documents, attachments and applications are sometimes filled with viruses. These viruses are released to your computer when the downloaded files are accessed or opened.
Besides the internet, everyone should also be vigilant with phishing mails or fraud phone calls because these are also used to steal one's identity. And having an identity theft protection secures you from being a victim or identity theft. Identity theft protection can be simple tips everyone could use to protect themselves against identity theft.

One tip is to update your anti virus software. Because most cases of identity theft occur online, having your antivirus software up to date is a good precaution against identity theft. Another tip is to filter phishing mails by confirming with the company if they really are asking you personal information by phone calls to their official hotlines.

There are a lot of tips that a person could use against identity theft, and all are found in the internet.

Protection From Phishing Scams

2010-01-01T02:06:00.001-08:00

Phishing is an illegitimate method of extracting the personal and other financial details of a person.

Basically, it is a process of tricking a person on the internet to retrieve their banking passwords, bank accounts, phone number, credit card details, etc.

Phishing is one of the fastest growing crimes on the internet today.

The scammers behind these phishing emails are looking to trick you into replying with the information I mentioned. If they catch you out then it could cost you a small fortune.

There are, of course, laws against such crimes but those behind them are often difficult to track down.

There are variations of phishing, known as pharming and vishing, but the message sent via email is still the most commonly used tactic.

If you receive an email which says it is from your bank and that you need to verify your account details, or something similar from your credit card company, then you need to step back and consider whether it is genuine or not.

Legitimate companies, such as banks, Amazon and eBay, never, ever, ask their customers to reveal their passwords via email communication.

The links within phishing emails tend to link to sites which mimic the ones they are supposed to be.

Of course such sites are fake - they won't begin with 'https' and will certainly not be secure in any way, shape or form.

Moreover, the format of the email is very generic whereas the reputed organization always refers to you with your customer id number in their emails.

If you want to keep yourself safe from phishing emails then you just need commonsense - read emails carefully and never click on links unless you are sure of where they will lead you.

However, installing pop up blockers and spam filters in your browser is yet another step you can follow.

Avoid Getting Phished

2010-01-01T02:04:00.000-08:00

This year is proving to be much like last year in terms of the types of scams and frauds that are perpetrated online.

The one main difference I guess would be the rise in popularity of social networks which has made them a ripe target for cyber thieves who take money from your accounts, and malware writers who look to trick you with scareware.

Wherever online fraud is committed, the method is often all too familiar - phishing.

Essentially, phishing is like an online con.

These con artists behind phishing attempts utilise social networks, websites, email, instant messengers and spam to try and trick you into giving out information that you really ought to keep to yourself.

Keeping yourself safe and avoiding phishing scams isn't so hard though.

Here are a few tips on identifying and avoiding phishing scams -

How to Identify a Phishing Scam:

* If the email you received from your bank asks for details they should already know then don't reply!

* If someone uses scare tactics or pressure to try to get you to reveal information then walk away.

* Legitimate corporations and people never request confidential data via email or instant messaging programs.

* Phishers don't typically know their victims - if you get generic emails that don't address you by name then be wary.

How to Keep Safe:

* If you think you have been contacted by a genuine organisation then confirm via telephone (get the number off your bank statement, etc, NOT from their email!)

* Search for a company's name, the contents of an email or a particular name - you may be surprised by what turns up.

* Never click on links in emails, especially if they 'appear' to link to your bank or credit card company.

Think before you click on anything, take a deep breath before visiting any website and never open email attachments from people you do not know.

Stay safe and don't get phished.

Avoid Free Online Registry Cleaner Scam

2010-01-01T01:50:00.001-08:00

There are a lot of people who are advertising and asking you to try their online registry cleaner.

You might just come across a pop up window that says you need to scan your online registry and that it offers an online registry cleaner. It can be really attractive and it can be really enticing to have your registry scanned. Who wants to wait countless minutes for a program to finish downloading when you can just do it online? But you have to be careful with your Internet activity.

Fix Registry Errors and Speed Up Your PC Now

As you probably know by now, there are a lot of scams going on in the Internet. And an offer from an online registry cleaner could be one of them. Most of the time, people who are duped by the culprits behind these scams are those who are not very knowledgeable of computer maintenance. There are some people who may be a little bit knowledgeable but desperate for the service that fall into the trap. And what happens is the online registry cleaner infects the computer with malicious codes that could help the culprits steal your identity. And no one likes that, right?

What you can do to prevent this is to first ignore all pop ups. You can turn on your pop-up blocker so you won’t be bothered by these annoying pop-up scams. Second, before you do anything to your computer, read about it. Do some researching. Make sure that you are somehow versed with what you are doing. Or better yet, have a professional do it. It’s better that someone who has the expertise clean up your computer than mess it up with a virus or malicious codes. Third, you can do some research on the product that you are interested in. Check out reviews about the product.

Don’t fall for any of those free online registry cleaner scams. Protect your identity. And protect your computer as well.

LOTTERY SCAM : "OHIO LOTTERY COMMISSION/BRITISH LOTTERY "

2009-12-28T15:27:00.000-08:00

This is one email I received today, so evident that I ask myself why people fall in this scams?

"Ohio Lottery Commission
615 W. Superior Ave.
Cleveland, OH 44113,United States of America.
(is an affiliate of MCI Networks).
Suite 72 Cariocca Park,
2 Sawley Road,Manchester,
M40 8BB.
UNITED KINGDOM.

Dear Winner,

We are pleased to inform you of the result of the Ohio Lottery Commission/British Lottery (international program)

You have therefore been approved for a lump sum pay out of $500,000.00 in cash, which is the winning payout for First category winners.

To file for your claim, please contact us and Provide us your information below:

FULL NAME...
ADDRESS:...
SEX:...
AGE...
TEL...FAX
COUNTRY....

Jackpot winners of the Mega Millions and Classic Lotto games should call us to make an appointment to submit the claim.

Contact: Mr Jackson Garry
E-mail: ohio2009lcbl2@live.com

CONGRATULATIONS FROM THE MEMBERS AND STAFF OF OHIO LOTTERY COMMISSION/BRITISH LOTTERY.

Yours faithfully,
Ms.Candy Harry
Online coordinator for OHIO LOTTERY/BRITISH
International Lottery Program."

How To Avoid Work at Home Internet Scams

2009-12-25T02:19:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately work-from-home Internet scams are becoming popular in our society this day. More and more people are using the World wide web for not only social, but also business opportunities. Whether you are looking for employment on the Internet or you want to start your own home business, be cautious in the steps you take.

The challenge is how to learn whether or not an online business is a scam or real. A key to not getting trapped into a scam is to always research the company before you do anything. Check with the Superior Business Agency. See if the company is public or private. If public, you will be able to get more detailed information on their finances and stability.

Here are some basic tips of caution if you are searching the World wide web for a home business. An important first step in avoiding a scam is to have a list of questions you want answered. If you're not satisfied with the answers you receive, it would be better not to pursue this company or product.

Be aware of upfront costs and fees. If you are starting your own business, there will some startup fees. This is normal with any offline or online business. Weigh the costs, the value, and have a budget. Certain companies such as independent distributors for a MLM company will have a startup fee for the training you'll need.

Another example is the Medical Home Billing business. In order to be a professional home medical billing business, extensive training and medical knowledge is required. If you're approached to pay a small fee to get your business off the ground, most likely the company is not a reputable business. Many times these types of businesses will disappear, and there goes your investment. If you have the medical knowledge and training, you'll know what's involved. Keep your eyes open at all times.

If you are investing in materials, ask about the quality. Go beyond that and ask for samples before you invest your time and money. There are companies that will push that get-rich-swift theory. Don't be scammed by this philosophy. Building a successful home business takes hard work and time.

Understanding the process involved in owning your own home business from the Internet is critical. Set goals and prepare a definite budget. Know ahead of time what products or service you want.

Work-from-home Internet scams are growing and becoming more accessible to the everyday person trying to create a solid investment. A successful company believes 100 percent in their product or service. They'll back their business with facts and statistics that'll prove their success rate. Do not be afraid to pursue your home World wide web business by following up with a question.

A home business can be a successful one. Know your product or service and research the company or products you are looking at investing in. Time, money, and value are three important aspects of producing a successful long-term business. Easy steps on your part will work to your advantage down the road. Be smart, stay motivated, and create a home business that you can be proud of. Internet scams can be avoided with these simple tips.

Safety Tip - Email Scams

2009-12-25T02:11:00.000-08:00

The City of Douglasville Police Department offers a few tips on email scams and what to avoid.

Internet Scams pyramid scam

2009-12-25T02:02:00.000-08:00

The Internet hand out as an outstanding means for depositor, permitting them too access with no difficulty and reasonably investigates savings chance. But the Internet is as well an outstanding device for scammer and spammers. That’s why you must for all time think two times prior to you put in your cash in any opening you study regarding it all the way through the World wide web.

The World wide web let the individuals or companies to exchange a few words with big viewers exclusive of expenses a lot of time, attempt, or funds. Any person will be able to arrive at tens of thousands of public by structuring an Internet web site, relocating a memo on an on the web announcement board, entering a conversation in a live "chat" room, or conveyance mass e-mails. It's trouble-free for fraudsters to create their mail appear genuine and believable. But it's almost not possible for shareholder to notify the dissimilarity stuck between truth and imaginary tale.The types of savings scammer see on on the internet are copy of the frauds carried out over the telephone or through the mail. Keep in mind that fraudsters are able to use a multiplicity of Internet utensils to increase fake information, together with bulletin boards, on the web information sheet, spam, or chat which comprises of World wide web Relay Chat or Web Page Chat. They're also able to also construct an ostentatious, complicated web page. All of these apparatus charge very modest funds and are able to be establishing at the fingertips of spammer. Think about all things recommend with cynicism. Investment frauds frequently fit one of the subsequent groups:The "Pump And Dump" ScamIt's familiar to see e-mail posted on the web that advise bookworm to buy a stock promptly or tell you to put up for sale previous to the price goes down. Frequently the writers force to allege to have "inside" information about an awaiting expansion or to make use of an "reliable" mixture of financial and supply market information to select stocks. In actuality, they might be insiders or salaried promoters who position to expand by advertising their shares subsequent to the stock price are pumped up by susceptible investors. Just the once these spammer and scammer put up for sale their shares and discontinue hyping the stock, the value naturally cascade and financier misplace their cash. Fraudsters often utilize this trick with tiny, thinly-traded companies because it's easier to force a stock when there are little or no details obtainable regarding the company.T

he PyramidBeware of mail that you read: "How to Make Large Money from Your Home Computer!!!" individual on the web advertiser said that shareholder could "turn $5 into $60,000 in immediately in three to six weeks." In actuality, this plan was not anything more than an electronic edition of the typical "pyramid" system in which participant effort to create cash exclusively by employing new contributors into the program.

Paid To Click revealed

2009-12-23T01:39:00.000-08:00

Paid To Click is an online business model that draws online traffic from people aiming to earn from home. Paid-To-Click, or simply PTC websites act as middlemen between advertisers and consumers; the advertiser pays for displaying ads on the PTC website, and a part of this payment goes to the viewer when he views the advertisement.

The viability of the PTC business model has been questioned, as fraudulent clicks have ramped up the expenses for advertisers. With lawsuits filed against the internet search companies, the burden has been placed on Google, Yahoo and others to determine the valid clicks from the fraudulent ones, although PTC site may just be used as advertising, to direct traffic to one's site. Moreover, many users registered in PTC websites are bots.

Even though advertisement is the most widely known method for PTC to stay alive, most of the profit comes from the direct sales of fake referrals which are created virtually by the PTC owner at his will. To cover up all this scheme, PTC owners inject some normal ads from fictional advertisers, thereby keeping the system running smoothly.

Some PTCs are also used to mimic mass human traffic, which can help a botnet stay undercover and perform click fraud activity in second and third-tier ad networks. Many PTC owners also pollute the ads with malware and botnet rootkits. Scams, although exposed on various PTC forums, are still heavily used by newcomers who are drawn in to the websites by search engines. Scam PTC sites are known to attract new users with cheap offers for upgrades and referrals and disappear without trace after a short time.

You can search by internet how many people promote this kind of websites like Bux.to and so many others hoping to get some referrals. Bux.to for exemple I requested my earnings about 500 dóllars in september 2008, and untill now zero payment...

Almost 99.99 percentage of them are scams and if there are some honest one then earning through them is very slow .

I also was scammed working hard every day clicking about 8 hours a day..what a waste of time!

why to waste yours and others precious time in such a risky and fraudbusiness full of scams ?

A real story very similar to mine:

" Real Story
learn from other experience Two years ago when I was 20 I had never used internet since i tought that its a wastage of time,

It was 18 months ago that I came across an ad that said get paid to click so I joined a site called www.waoindia.com that was when I learn t about referals and that 95% of the internet was based on referals and to my shock found out that there was scams too.
Then I started to research hours and hours without sleep weekends flying by, i was not realizing the reality that am only wasting my precious time.

after a month i heard about neobux and some other legitimate websites, i was only earning pennies from them and at that time to get more adverts to click i spend about 8 hours a day on internet.

after two month i learn how to make referral using referral deals and referral exchange in a forum, that makes me mad that my earning is increasing, now i have joined atleast 50 websites.

then i put my more of time in getting referrals, i quit from my guitar classes, go college in months,i research on net, read and follow articles, and also get success sometime in getting referral, there was a load of hardwork.

now after one year of joining the first bux website, i realize that what am doing? a am simply wasting my precious time. i was trapped in the matrix of referrals, i forget the outer world, what am earning was just few bucks a day around 3 - 4 bucks and for earning them i have to work hard daily. after that i get frustrated and feel repentance that i simply waste a precious one full year in bux website, which is not a realbusiness , the fcking referral system,. if i dont quit from my guitar classes or if i go college regularly then i would have learned a lot." extract from http://www.squidoo.com/ptc-scam-list.

Like so many others with a good intention of earning honest money we fall easily in these kind of scams.

ID theft protection, some important measures

2009-12-19T09:30:00.000-08:00

Id theft report, id theft protection measures:

Quick lesson on Email and Social Network based fraud

2009-12-19T09:24:00.000-08:00

Quick lesson on Email and Social Network based fraud

Quick lesson on Email and Social Network based fraud ( High Resolution ) ... "Internet Fraud" "Email Scams" "Email Fraud" "Dating Scams" "Online Scams" "Website Scams" "Search for Internet Scams" "Submit Email Scams" "Submit Internet Scams" "search for email scams" "Lottery scams" "won a Lottery" "email virus" spyware....

Internet Scams! Information They Don't Want you to Every Find Out About

2009-12-19T09:17:00.000-08:00

It makes no difference if you are thinking about starting a business, shopping or just looking for a new job online, you can protect yourself from some of the cleverest scams online if you just follow the simple steps below.

(1) You can always find out information on a company or person by doing a quick search online. Go to Goggle or Yahoo and type in the company or person name and then type in the word scam after. Follow all leads. If no leads show up, then that is a good thing. It means there are no complaints on them online.

(2) Check with the state's Attorney General's Office to see if the company or person have received a series of complaints.

(3) Check with the National Fraud Information Center at: www.fraud.org to see if the company or person is listed. They provide a lot of information about telephone, mail, and online scams.

(4) Make sure the company or person you plan to do business with have a phone number and physical address. Call the company or person to see if the phone number actually belongs to them.

(5) Always make sure that you get a guarantee. Ask the company what will happen if you want to return the product or what do you need to do if you want a refund.

(6) Be cautious of companies who ask for your bank account info, or ask permission to deposit money into your bank account.

(7) Try to use your credit card instead of cash if you buy a product or invest in a business opportunity. That way if you do get ripped off, it may be easier to dispute the charges with your credit card company.

Phishing Stealing Of Identity Online

2009-12-19T09:08:00.000-08:00

Phishing is the stealing of identity information from users online and has become one of the biggest dangers of unknowingly giving away your personal information.

According to the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), the number of Phishing incidents is increasing at a rate of 56 percent every month. Phishing can be done on an unsuspecting victim who receives an email that comes from a respectable business, such as a bank or other types of financial institutions and the email links the victim to a web site where he or she is asked to provide account information. What is scary the site in which you have been directed to looks legitimate and about 10 percent of people who receive these types of emails fall prey to these crooks.

Thousands of computers are compromised each day without the user ever knowing they have unwillingly given up their private and personal information. Phishing is automated identity theft. Gartner Group estimated in that 1.78 million Americans had already given their information to phishers with a cost to U.S. consumers and industry is 2.4 billion dollars. It is a good bet that everyone who has an email account has received some level of Phishing.

Anytime you have received an email from what appears to be a legitimate business that has a well known presence on the internet has been used to steal your personal information. The type of information being requested is passwords, usernames, account numbers, credit cards, social security numbers and any other data that will allow the criminals to take your identity and money. Identity theft is the fasting growing crime in the United States. Can you imagine having criminals take out a second mortgage on your home or better yet purchase a home using your credit information, fraudulent charges on your credit card. If you receive an email as described above and provided the information most likely you are a victim of Identity theft. Some of the businesses being impersonated are banks, auctions sites, Internet retails, charities, financial institutes and any other internet transaction base site. Keep in mind that most of the impersonating is of the Larger companies that are well known, but it is just a matter of time that all of us will need to be on high alert. Even if you don't answer the email you can become a victim with the use of spy ware or Trojans. In this case you don't have to supply any information. The victim's computer is compromised and sends the information to the phishers on its own. This is known a keystroke logger that watches for usernames, passwords and other financial or personal information. Who is doing the Phishing? Serious crackers are sophisticated and don't care who they work for, they can develop their own spy ware, run scripts through email or websites, compromise networks that are behind a firewall and generally cause disaster. Organized Crime and criminal syndicates are responsible for the most elaborate and thorough phishing scams. This group hires the serious crackers to develop websites to recruit mules for money laundering; they can create fake credit and Cash cards with your personal information and use them anywhere they want. It is said that this is the most dangerous group and create most of the identity theft. Terrorists are currently profiting from your identity, in 2002 the FBI stated the following in congressional testimony: The impact of Identity theft is greater that just the loss of money or property.

Terrorists and terrorist groups require funding to perpetrate their terrorist agendas. The methods use to finance terrorism range from the highly sophisticated to most basic. There is virtually no financing method that has not at some level been exploited by the groups. Identity theft is a key catalyst for fueling many of these methods. Just be careful and don't respond to emails. Call the financial institutes that you do business with to verify the email and also notify them of incident.

Ralph Winn writes about Home Security and other related topics. For more information visit on Home Security

Anti-phishing

2009-12-18T10:38:00.000-08:00

Anti-phishing measures..how to prevent? Here some prevention measures: People can take steps to avoid phishing attempts by slightly modifying their browsing habits. When contacted about an account needing to be "verified" (or any other topic used by phishers), it is a sensible precaution to contact the company from which the e-mail apparently originates to check that the e-mail is legitimate. Alternatively, the address that the individual knows is the company's genuine website can be typed into the address bar of the browser, rather than trusting any hyperlinks in the suspected phishing message.

Browsers alerting users to fraudulent websites

Another popular approach to fighting phishing is to maintain a list of known phishing sites and to check websites against the list. Microsoft's IE, Mozilla Firefox , Safari, and Opera all contain this type of anti-phishing measure. Firefox used Google anti-phishing software. Opera uses live blacklists from PhishTank and GeoTrust, as well as live whitelists from GeoTrust. Some implementations of this approach send the visited URLs to a central service to be checked, which has raised concerns about privacy. According to a report by Mozilla in late 2006, Firefox was found to be more effective than Internet Explorer at detecting fraudulent sites in a study by an independent software testing company. An approach introduced in mid-2006 involves switching to a special DNS service that filters out known phishing domains: this will work with any browser, and is similar in principle to using a hosts file to block web adverts. To mitigate the problem of phishing sites impersonating a victim site by embedding its images (such as logos), several site owners have altered the images to send a message to the visitor that a site may be fraudulent. The image may be moved to a new filename and the original permanently replaced, or a server can detect that the image was not requested as part of normal browsing, and instead send a warning image. Remember always that common sense is the best weapon against fraud. Never give your personal information online : name, adress, credit card number, bank account details, and so on, unless its from a confirmed, thrusted and legitime source.

Different Kinds of Internet Scams

2009-12-18T04:00:00.000-08:00

Because of the popularity of the internet, scammers have been very clever in using it to easily lure money from many prospect victims. Learn the different kinds of online scams in order to be aware of how they do it and avoid being a victim of any of these scams. Today, millions of people around the world use the Internet on a daily basis. This is due to a wide variety of useful information available in many websites and the convenience it offers to web users. However, it also resulted in many Internet users being victimized by different online scams.
These internet scams have enormously emerged and has already alarmed the authorities. The objective of these scams is to steal money and property. It even caused death to unsuspecting victims. Based on reports from authorities, there are millions of dollars of lost money due to these crimes, and because of this, many police agencies have organized special units to combat these kinds of crime. Scammers use different schemes and strategies in order to do their criminal acts. Here are some of the many kinds of Internet scams spreading online.

Phishing Scams E-mail is one of the most used features of the Internet that provides users a convenient means of communication. However, e-mails have become a great way for scammers to easily lure money or personal information from innocent individuals. Phishing is one of the scams which use e-mails as a way to fool people. These e-mail scams usually consist of letters pretending that they are from a bank or an online financial group, providing a link and convinces you to visit that certain website and requests you to fill up a form that is aimed to collect sensitive personal information such as bank accounts, credit card information, passwords and many other information. These sites are "bogus", in the sense that it looks like a legitimate company since it resembles the looks of some of the known legitimate companies offering the same services posted by the scammers. In reality, e-mails from these sites are merely to tempt their prospect victims to provide their personal data and once they succeed, they will use the submitted information to steal money from the victim's bank accounts or purchase items through the credit card provided by the victim. Phishing was first known during the 1990's when an attacker has attempted to steal AOL accounts by sending numerous messages to Internet users. The messages are intended to lure users to verify their accounts and ask their victims to input the password for the account. Afterwards, the victim's accounts will then be used to do different scamming schemes and even distribute numerous spam mails.

Lottery Scams Lottery scams are e-mails containing messages informing you that you have won millions of dollars from an international lottery. The message usually informs you that your e-mail address was included among the winners through a draw. In order to convince the prospect victims, they would attach links of real lottery sites or even attach fake documents or ads which claim that the lottery was endorsed by popular companies like Microsoft. If the scammers were able to convince its victims, they would then ask important information and then request the victim to send some money to cover up taxes, processing fees, and other similar charges in order to get the prize when in reality there is no such prize and everything is bogus.

419 or Nigerian Scams The 419 scam or popularly known as the Nigerian scam is one of the most widespread and very popular among other Internet scams. This also uses e-mails in attempting to steal people's money. The e-mail basically contains different versions of stories such as an alleged political leader having been ousted from power and having millions of funds which he needs to transfer to other countries. He will then offer you a share of the funds by helping him. Another example is an alleged rich person seriously ill and needs someone to help in managing the funds for charity purposes. The huge amount of money involved usually attracts unsuspecting victims to believe the scam. Similar to other e-mail scams, the criminal would then request for money to be utilized for processing the transfer of funds to the victim's account. Some scammers even request their prospect victim to travel abroad to speed up the transfer of funds but the victims will then be abducted and would only be released after paying a large amount of money.

For more information on Criminal Lawyers and Email Spam and Phishing please visit our website.