Report Email Scams & Frauds

The Internet Crime Complaint Center identifies 18 main categories of Internet scams and fraud. These include credit card, mail, auction, and investment fraud and schemes. It doesn't matter that these fraud attempts are being made online-they are still illegal and can be reported. They will then be investigated by officials who specialize in Internet crimes.

Identify

Before you take any actions regarding an email scam or fraud, you must first assure that the email is in fact duplicitous in nature. Your first indication is the name of the person it is from and then the subject of the email. If it is from a person you do not know, assume it is unsolicited email (SPAM). If the "Subject" line is not one that you recognize from recent correspondence you've sent, treat it as SPAM as well. See "Resources" for a list of common SPAM and scam subject lines.

Send all of the mail that you are leery about to your SPAM folder. This is because when the mail is in this folder, images cannot load on screen. Scammers can track whether the email was opened if the images load in your email account and they will continue to send you more unsolicited mail.

If any of the suspicious mail has an attachment, delete it immediately. Reporting the email sender is not worth the risk of opening an email attachment that could harm your computer.

Report

Open each of the emails that you suspect as being scams. Choose the option to view "Full Headers." Copy and paste the full headers into a separate word processing file along with the text of the email.

Go to the Internet Crime Complaint Center (see direct link below). You will need to provide full contact information for yourself, include your name, email address, mailing address and phone number. Copy and paste the full header and email again into the complaint form. Give every piece of information about how you believe this person has attempted to defraud you.

Final Actions

Once your complaint is filed, you can feel free to delete the offending emails. Set up filters on your email system to block those same emails from reaching your inbox. For instance, if there was a unique keyword in the email, like "sweepstakes," set up a filter to send all emails that contain this word to your trash folder immediately. If you open your email with Microsoft Outlook or Eudora, consider purchasing an anti-virus and firewall program, like McAfee, which identifies and filters unsolicited mail for you automatically.

IC3; Internet Crime Schemes

http://www.ic3.gov/crimeschemes.aspx

AOL's Top 10 Spam E-mail Subject Lines

http://daol.aol.com/security/spam/

File a Complaint With the Internet Crime Complaint Center

http://www.ic3.gov/complaint/default.aspx