Internet scams…they seem to be everywhere. Throughout the course of the internet’s existence, there have been some basic scams and some quite intricate scams. As days go by it seems new plays on old scams and new twists seem to be found daily. Whether they pop up in our inbox or through social media, internet scams have become a part of our routine and sadly, people all over the world are losing billions of dollars yearly.
Now for a little background. I’ve been fascinated with these scams for as long as I can remember. I would almost welcome the poor verbiage and grammar of the emails and how vastly crazy they sounded. “You are the winner of X contest” or “First Bank of Nigeria has found that you are the heir to $86 million”. Of course, everything in between comes in those types of emails but I’m sure that if you have had an email address for more than a week, you have received at least one type of fraud/scam email.
Image courtesy of Yahoo.com
According to the FTC, it seems that millennials, age 20–29 are the ones that fall hardest. Quite shocking to me, as they are growing up the most tech savvy generation in the history of mankind. To see that over 40% of the victims reporting fraud lost some type of money in this demographic truly shows that no matter how “aware” someone should be, they can be easily tricked and robbed of their life’s earnings. Also, the report from the FTC goes on to state that the median amount lost is around $500 and in 2019 alone, $328 million was reported lost to internet fraud.
At the end of the day, we all need to be aware of our identity and how important it is to safeguard it from fraud. Just like locking your house before you leave and turning on the alarm or locking your car in a parking lot, our identity needs to be looked after now more than ever. Once someone has obtained your info, your life as you know it can become a war zone. Everything you know will be destroyed; credit history, credit card available balances wiped out, bank accounts drained, new charge accounts opened fraudulently in your name, home and auto loans funded with your identity and the list can go on and on. The scariest part is, you and all your friends and family know you are you, however, try getting your identity cleaned up once an impostor has had malicious free reign and you’ll realize just how much hurt you’re truly in.
image courtesy of LE-Vpn
My goal over the next several posts will be to go over several scams and frauds, detailing what they are, how to avoid them, and how to handle them should you accidentally become a victim. Some of those scams are as follows:
· Phishing Scams
· Nigerian Scam
· Lottery Scams
· Hitman Scams-(yes you read that right)
· Romance Scams
· Fake antivirus and software
· Facebook or other Social Media impersonations
· Travel Scams
· Bitcoin Scams
· Fake shopping websites
· Job offer scams
· SMS Scamming- also known as Smishing
· Over payment for merchandise scam
· Tech Support
If there are any, you’d like to see covered more in depth than others, feel free to let me know. If I missed any that you’d like to get details on, let me know too. My background is having a criminal justice degree focusing on computer crimes and the technology used to commit those crimes. I’ve had a successful history of “scamming the scammer” in my day too, but early on in my life, I have fallen for a scam and even had credit card info and banking info breached. I’ve learned from mistakes and mistakes of others and have helped many people avoid scams, recoup losses and even helped get their lives back on track.
I look forward to discussing these scams and how to better prepare the people for them. Having knowledge and being able to somewhat see through a potential scam is what I preach and encourage everyone to study up on the scams and always be on the look out for the next big scam. Being prepared is the best defense against these guys because the bottom line is they will stop at nothing to get your money and not have a care in the world who the hurt in the process.
