Recognizing Common E-mail Scams

E-mail scams abound today, with more people connecting to the Web each day. You might be thinking that you're too smart to fall for a scam; I hope you're right. Unfortunately, many people do fall for these schemes. After all, if they weren't making money, the scammers wouldn't be bothering, would they? Most of the email scams appeal to people in one of three ways: greed, sympathy or fear. This article discusses the most common types of scams and how you can avoid being taken in.

Email scams appealing to greed generally fall into two styles. The first is the email telling you that you've won a big lottery or sweepstakes prize. The second type of scam appealing to greed is the promise of a "guaranteed" credit line. With both styles of scams, they will either ask for a small fee or they'll ask for identifying information to "verify" who you are. How can you win a lottery if you didn't buy a ticket? Never going to happen, people! There's no such thing as guaranteed credit without doing a credit check, either, so please don't get your hopes up.

The scams appealing to your sympathy usually something like helping a person get money out of a foreign country or to get them out of the country or something similar. Unless you just happen to be a high-ranking government official, ask yourself why they would contact you or really think you could help? Sometimes this scheme will throw in the greed factor along with the sympathy ploy by saying that if you help now with a small amount of money then they will send you a larger amount of money later. Honestly, do you really believe this person is being held prisoner in a foreign country but his captors were kind enough to provide him with an internet connection and free access to a computer?

Email scams appealing to fear are generally the ones known as "phishing" emails. This is where the email purports to be from a company that you actually do business with, usually some sort of financial company like Paypal or Chase. Sometimes it will be from a site where you have a seller's account like eBay, also. Common themes with this type of scam is telling your account has somehow become compromised or that they've noted suspicious activity in your account. They then tell you to click on a link to go to the site and "verify" your details. Scammers have become experts at creating links that seem to go to an official website but in reality are under control of the scammers. Not only should you not put any information in at these sites but you shouldn't even click on them. Sometimes just clicking through can put a trojan or keylogger on your computer. That gets the crook access to everything you have on your computer, including passwords, credit card numbers, and bank account details.

As you can see, email scams can be quite creative but you can avoid being fooled by them. Never ever give financial or indentifying information in response to an email or popup. If you are concerned that it might be real, instead of clicking the link you should manually type in the address of the company to check or even call them on the phone. I have yet to find a company that contacts customers by email for any identifying information or even for account problems. If you ever click on these types of links by accident, be sure to scan your computer for viruses or spyware. If it's not infected, you should immediately go to the site and change your password. If you have put in any information that can be used to commit identity theft (especially birthdate and social security number), take steps to prevent damage to your credit like contacting your bank and credit card companies to have them watch your accounts for any suspicious activity.

The moral of the day? If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!