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This type of fraud is the fastest growing, and with more and more internet users (many of them new to the workings of being online), it’s getting a lot of people.
As a general set of rules for everyone that may not know, in any emails you may get:
-Never, in any transaction, should you wire money to anyone or send Western Union (unless sending to a known friend or family member). There is no recovery of your money if it is a scam. If you are going to send someone money- be it for an item, for charity, or just to help them out, always research and if you go for it, pay with a means that has fraud protection (credit card or Paypal in some cases).
-Remember- most crooks/scammers will use three tactics.
+ They will either offer you a really good deal on something (How can I pass this up? What a good deal!), or
+ They will offer you a way to make money for nothing or will offer to buy something off of you for way more than it’s worth (If I sign up for this they’ll send me $1000, wow!), or
+ They will make you feel bad. (345432 children in Antarctica will STARVE if you do not send money now).-Remember, scam emails can look 100% official. They can even look as if they are from an official email address, or even someone you know! This is an easy trick for a skilled scammer. Even if it looks official, always question things. Go to the official website if possible.
If you want to look and see where the email is really from, go to the options part of your email and there should be, somewhere, an option to view the full header of the email. This shows the email’s origins. This may be hard to decipher if you are new to the internet or not technologically inclined- get your computer nerd friend to look at it for you and they can help determine if it’s legit or not. I can help if you don’t know anyone else.– Never click links in an email to fill out information. It may look like the link is directing you to the official site, but in reality most of the time it is linking you to a site that only LOOKS like the official one, but is actually collecting your information for identity fraud. If you want to give information to a website (such as ebay, paypal, your credit card company, bank, IRS…) always close your email and go to the site normally. Clicking links in an email like this is only setting yourself up for identity theft, or possibly downloading viruses or computer trojans (or other information collection spyware).
– If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Money for nothing is exceedingly rare. Lotteries do not randomly select your email to win $1,000,000. No one in South Africa wants to send you free money because they are having bank problems. Research, or call the company in question to validate the information.
– Never ever allow someone to send you more money via check than what you are asking for an item. This is a popular scam. Someone will buy an item, send a check for OVER the item cost, then ask the seller to send back the ‘extra’ overage. The seller will cash the check, send the buyer the extra and the item… then oops! A week later the seller’s bank is calling to tell you that the check bounced and you are now out all that money, and the item. This happens a lot on places like Craigslist.
– If it’s important, any reputable financial institution will send you something in the physical mail- or call you- to let you know. They will not send you an email to tell you something crucial. They especially will not email you saying that you must ‘log in by clicking this link’ or that ‘your account is suspended, please click here immediately to reactivate’, etc. If you are unsure, just call them and they can help you determine if you actually have a problem or not. Don’t be lulled into the convenience of email- it’ll come back to bite you!
– Don’t answer scam emails. Even if it’s just so say “I know you’re a scam! You’ve been reported!”. Many scam emails are sent out by bots and no one will even read that. A scammer honestly won’t care if you reply unless you give the info they are looking for. All you are doing are confirming to them that your email address is real, and they can send things to it again!
If you have a scam email from a large institution (paypal, ebay, your large national bank, etc) you can forward it to them so they can investigate and possibly help fight the war on scams! 😉 But don’t reply to it directly.
I hope this helps everyone stay safe! If anyone else has other tips, feel free to share. 🙂
Volunteer mod- I'm here to help! Email me for the best response: nambroth at gmail.com
My art: featherdust.comYea, I got 2 of these IRS e-mails to my work e-mail (that I don’t use for filing taxes). They will just not stop.
Also be aware of EBay e-mails that say that you have item that was not won, that provides links to reporting phishing e-mails. I received one this week that said I didn’t win some unicorn poster (which I haven’t bid on anything in months) and the link to reporting it was bogus (right click on the link and choose properties – it will show the URL for the link without opening it).
I had never seen one like that. Keep your eyes peeled.
I did not do anything with it. I would NEVER give an e-mail like this the time of day. Just like all the e-mails I used to recieve saying that I won $250,000 in the English, African or somewhere lottery and all I have to do is call them to claim my prize. This was a heads up post for all you that this is a new way of phishing. I called the FBI once and asked them what I could do about an FBI e-mail I had gotten from “officer so and so” about whatever the subject matter was at the time. Sorry it’s been some time since I got that one and they told me that even though the person was claiming to be part of then they could not do anything about it.
What are we paying them for???
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