Protect Yourself from Internet Scams

Scams commonly happen nowadays. I will tell you 3 types of scams I have experienced through the Internet. You have to learn this carefully or get scammed. Just like a disease, if you know the symptoms, you can cure it as early as possible before it kills you. You might get scammed too if you don't pay attention to this.

Honestly, I am sick of scams being exist in the Internet. First time I got scammed will be my last one, I swear. I was looking for a Toshiba laptop in EBay. I put my bid on a listing but didn't win. The next day, I got an email from someone. He offered me a Toshiba laptop with exactly the same specification as the one I bid in EBay. I had no idea how he got my email address, but anyway he sent me this email. Being ignorant, I responded to this email and got into a deal. This person offered me a price of $350 which fitted to my budget. After the deal was closed, he asked me to send the money through Western Union while he prepared for the shipment. Being an honest and serious buyer, I did what he instructed me to do. Then the next day he said that he had made a mistake on the price. It should have been $700. He wanted more money after we clearly had closed the deal that the price of the laptop would be $350. I decided not to take the second deal. I was so mad as soon as I found this happen. I went to the Western Union agent to get my money back. To my understanding, he could not withdraw the money until I told him the MTCN (Money Transfer Control Number), but I was wrong. He was able to withdraw the money and he had done it! Once you wire transfer money, the money is gone. He never shipped the laptop and I lost $350 from this scam. I was new to EBay that time, so I never knew that this company has been warning people about this type of scam.

I quit working after I have had my first child. Since depending on one income is not enough for the family, I decided to look for a home based job so I don't have to leave my daughter in a daycare. I started to put my resume in employment websites such as Monster, Career Builder, The Employment Guide and many more. I also put my resume in Craig's list website.

After a while, I got lots of job offer messages in my mailbox. "Companies" started to send me emails offering a home based business job or part time basis job, etc. I have received 50 job offers in a month.

I was going to respond to one of the offers that I received when I realized these emails were written in a common style. As I read all emails thoroughly, I feel weird. The common things I noticed from these emails are:

• All of the companies are based in United Kingdom
• Their business is selling Artworks or Handicrafts
• They use free email address such as yahoo or hotmail. If they claim to have a big company, why not using the company email address?
• They say they have clients or customers in the United States that pay them with checks or money order which are difficult to cash in UK
• They want me to send them the data such as my name, address, phone number, fax number so they can process the employment
• They tell me what to do, such as I will work for them to receive the checks or money orders from their clients in the US, cash them at my bank, take my commission (10%, 20%, or 30%) then send the rest of the money to them via Western Union. Sounds easy, doesn't it?

I was surprised when I typed the website address they gave me. The website of this company did not even exist. Also, I found it very contradicting when in one of the job offers they mentioned that they needed a God-fearing and trustworthy person to do this job. I believe they don't realize what they are doing. They want a God-fearing person while they are free to scam people? I don't want to get scammed for the second time, so I ignored this stupid job offer.

Beware of scam artists that offer you this kind of home based business or part time job. Sometimes, even if you don't put your resume online, these emails just go to your inbox. Just delete them right away. Now, you know that this is a scam.

As I told you before, I was looking for a home based job. While doing this, I buy items wholesale which I resell in EBay or other websites which don't charge listing fee. I posted a listing selling jewelry. An hour later, I got 4 responses from people that said they were interested to buy the items. I thought they were serious buyers so I replied back.

To my surprise, all these scam artists with names Mrs. Nicole Beecroft, Robert Marvins, Morris Wilson and Mark Billy replied me with similar sentences.

• They want to buy the items I sell
• They want me to provide the data such as my name, address, phone number, fax number, etc. so that they can put my name on the check
• Their clients who owe them some amount of money will send me a check. They ask me to cash it and take the cost of the jewelry, then send the rest of the money via Western Union
• Their shipper will pick up the items from my house and ship it to them

I believe this email is another scam. I was watching news on TV one day that some people have been victims of the scams I mentioned above. According to their experiences, after cashing the checks and sending the rest of the money to these scam artists, they got a call from the bank informing that the checks were fraud. Their worst nightmare was they had to pay back the money to the bank. Can you imagine if they cashed a $3,000 check and had to return it to the bank after the bank found out? Where would they get the money? Please be alert.