Various Online Scams - You have one defense - Yourself

I am writing this article to join in the war against online crimes. There are many of them, but all have one thing in common - to take your money. Let's see, there is the 419Scam named after the Nigerian law outlawing it. There is the lottery scam telling you that you have won funds. The auction and rental property scam. There is also now the online dating scam. Oh, let's not forget the "I am dying and want to give the funds to you" scam. There are many more, but if you don't want to keep a list of them, just don't fall for any tricks that require you to send your money "first" or give out your account details to anyone you don't know! The 419 scam seems to be the oldest one I've seen. This scam has a very high success rate and has stolen millions from people across the globe, especially Americans. Don't hate me for this, but I think that the reason people are being scammed is due to their own greed. How could you think that someone you don't know will send you millions? The only people making millions are the scammers and that is the bottom line. You are not special; they have sent this email to many others. The banks cannot protect you, which is sad. Once you have deposited these fake funds into your account, the banks will make the funds available to you, but in a couple of days they will contact you to tell you the check or money gram was fake and you must pay them within x days or face federal charges. You could end up in jail and/or in debt while the scammer is having a great time with your funds. The online dating scam is new it seems. Someone contacts you. Confesses love while they are in the U.S.A. then all of a sudden they had to leave the U.S. on business to a foreign country. This is only after you have chatted for a while and they can see that you like them. Anyway, after they have gotten to the foreign country, they tell you they cannot get back home and need you to cash a money gram for them because this country does not accept money grams/orders. If you fall for it, this is how it goes: you will receive the money gram in the mail. You deposit it into your account and wait for it to clear. In the meantime, this person is telling you that this is an emergency and need the funds desperately. The banks make the funds available to you. You wire the money to your new "friend". The bank, after a few more days, tells you that the money gram was fake and you must pay it back in 7 days. If you don't have the payback money, you might go to jail. Either way, you are out of money and you will never hear from your "friend" again, except maybe to tell you how stupid you were (I read a testimonial about this one). The best way to notice this scam is to ask verifiable personal questions, many of them. Maybe ask for a cell phone or home phone number with their voicemail on it. This won't always work though. They could be using this person's identity. Ask about their elementary or high school days - something you can verify. A lot of times, the photo they sent to you is also fake - it is usually of an extraordinarily beautiful man or woman they picked up from the site where you met them or online some place else. In this case, ask them if they have a webcam or if they could send you a photo of themselves of the current moment - many people have digital cameras. Some men pose as beautiful women to get men to send them loads of dollars! If someone you met confesses love for you without meeting you - BEWARE!! If they ask you for money in any form, do not do it!! The sale of items or rental of property is yet another scam. This one works like this: You are selling an item online or renting out property. The scammer contacts you and then sends you a "real-looking" check or money order over the amount you specified. The scammer either asks that you send the overpayment portion back to them or some emergency has happened in their family and they need the money wired back to them. You do so. The bank gives you a dreadful call - the check was fake and you must pay the bank back within 7 days. God forbid you already sent the product out too - especially a pet - where did the pet go if the address was fake?!! The best way to get away from this particular scam is to not accept payments more than you specified. Also, wait at least 7 - 11 days before shipping out your products. This will give your bank enough time to see if the check will bounce - saving you a big financial problem. If the funds never bounced after 11 days, then I would think it would be safe to return the funds back to the owner, but this would be your decision. If the scammer badgers you for the funds, just stall them until you can be sure you won't be held responsible for fake checks and money orders. There are many more of these scams. You MUST arm yourself and not fall for these scams. Also, all of the scams are not from Nigeria. These scams are worldwide. Nigeria is just the most popular country. Just for your reading pleasure, go to Yahoo and type in these words "stranded in Nigeria" and see what you get. Start with these two websites for information to protect yourself. http://www.joewein.de/sw/419-by-ip.htm http://www.crime-esearch.org/news/12.12.2004/843/comments?p=7 #