Internet Scams - Don't Be Taken In!

There are many ways that people have been scammed, sometimes people have been taken for thousands of dollars. There is the person who was scammed out of $50,000 trying to assist a man from another country get here for medical attention. Another was used as a middleman for others who were shipping stolen goods from the US. Scamming can either cost you thousands of dollars, or even puts you in jail for mail fraud or other crimes. It is hoped that this article will prevent you from running headlong into a situation that you might regret for a very long time.

Email scams: There have been email scams as long as the internet has been in use. There are some email scams that come from con artists in other countries. Some of these email scams are similar. There is the one that comes from Nigeria that is a notice that Mark smith (a real person, he did die and that is his name) died overseas and because either you are the nearest relative, or the nearest relative is unable to be found, can they please leave his money in your bank account until everything gets settled. There are other email scams that are similar to this but the details are changed. They all have one thing in common, they want your bank account and other personal information, and supposedly you get a percentage of this money for "helping" them. The most recent scam is one claiming to be one that is out to help victims of scam artists. Just send them $4,000 and they will send you millions in return. Too good to be true and you shouldn't pay anyone anything to get rewarded a settlement. There are also lottery and sweepstakes scams that you need to watch out for also.

Don't take the bait:There are several things that you can do to prevent yourself from getting involved in these types of scams. The first and foremost rule is not to give them entrance into your life. Do not open email from people you do not know or emails with the sender information blank. This prevents scammers from knowing your email address is active and available for the taking or selling. It also prevents you from a downloading viruses onto your computer.

The search engine test: If you happen to break this rule and find an interesting regular mail that doesn't ask you for anything but does have a link in it. Do not, go to that link. A great thing to do is to put the strange piece of information into a search engine and see what you come up with. More than likely you are not the first to be scammed with this information. You might put the domain name into Yahoo or Google, or a section of the email. You will be surprised to find out what comes up. Usually a someone else has already received that same email and has put a notice on a website or a forum. This is one definite way to know what you have received without being a victim yourself.

Protect your password: Another suggestion is to have one email address that is used specifically for your online businesses (shopping, banking etc.) and another separate one that is for your private use. Passwords should be long and composed of two very different words, even two or more different languages are better than using just one.