10 Tips to Avoid Email Scams
Top Ten Symptoms or Indicators To Look Out For To Avoid Getting Your Money Stolen through Email Scams.
Of all the different types of frauds present in cyberspace, it’s the scams that steal your money that are obviously the worse. The monetary damage isn’t the only negative effects they inflict. Victims are embarrassed and can and often do become depressed upon realising they have been swindled out of their hard earned cash.Types of scams that target your cash are usually the Advanced Fee Fraud scams, Check Cashing scams and phishing techniques like fraudulent requests for your bank details, all of which are typically initiated via email. It is not limited to these of course, but this article is directed at spotting scams that are initiated via email.
These are our top ten tips to look out for on potential fraudulent emails to help you avoid being scammed.
1. No Personal Details on the Email?
Prevalent in most types of emails scams, this unavoidable symptom of online swindles is one of the best giveaways. You see, you receive SPAM email because your email address is on a mailing list. How it got there can vary. You may have given your email away to someone you shouldn’t have, or someone may have leaked it, or the fraudsters may have even guessed it! Regardless, the scammers have the mailing list and ergo have your email as well. But this is all they have – your email – they don’t have your personal details, like your name. They may try and guess it – for example if your email was johnsmith53443@adomain.com then it is a fair chance your name is John, but what if your email was darklegend66@adomain.com? Not so much. Also mailing lists are typically huge, often exceeding a million email addresses. Imagine trying to go through each one attempting to get the names of the potential recipients? Not likely. This results in inevitably the SPAM email not including your name, or any other personal details for that matter. This can be such an effective giveaway because so many types of prolific email scams are based on the lie that the person sending you the email knows who you are.Lets look at an example – many types of advanced fee fraud will claim to be from a barrister from somewhere like Nigeria telling you that you have some sort of inheritance. If he knows you have this inheritance then why does he not appear to know your name?
Also phishing scams like the fake requests from your bank – your name is never on the email. Before you ask “how do they know what bank I’m with?” we’ll tell you they don’t. They send a million emails from “Bank A” and there is always a good chance there is a significant percentage of people with that bank. The same principle applies with such frauds like fake lottery scams and phoney job offer scams. The fraudsters will try and cover their tracks by addressing you as “SIR” or as “The Recipient” or other titles, but it is a good thing to watch out for. Obviously if you do reply to an email like this, they will then have your name so expect the follow up email to be addressed to you.
Be aware however, there are a small amount of scammers out there that do get your name, so this indicator is by no means the definitive giveaway.
2. Bad Grammar and Spelling in the Email?
Typical in Advanced Fee Fraud and various types of check cashing scams, bad spelling and grammar is indicative of scam because many of these crimes can be traced back to various West African nations, China or Russia, all of which are non English speaking countries.Advanced Fee Fraud, or 419/Nigerian Fraud as it is often dubbed, is especially notorious for having this problem, and many attempt to overcome this inevitable hurdle by conceding in their initial emails that the writer is from a non-English speaking country is an attempt not to arouse suspicion from the victim. Either way, email users are advised to be very sceptical of emails from non-English speaking nations offering business deals or jobs, and emails that contain bad spelling and grammar.
3. Web Based Emails (e.g Hotmail, GMail & Yahoo)
This indicator is especially common in Advanced Fee (41) Fraud. To have your own POP3 domain email account (for examples ours is …@thatsnonsense.com) you first have to purchase that domain, or work for the people who own that domain. Fraudsters don’t work for businesses like this and don’t want to purchase domain accounts, so they will set up free web based email accounts for you to contact them via - for example hotmail, msn, yahoo or gmail are all heavily used by scam artists. Legitimate businesses, foreign or domestic, always have their own domain, so have no need to send or receive emails from these free web mail accounts. Web based email is also popular with scammers not only because it is free but requires little or no identification.So if you receive an email from some Nigerian banker or barrister and he is using a free web mail account, it is unlikely that he is genuine, and you are probably looking at an attempt to scam you.
4. Sense of Urgency
This symptom is present in many, many scams you find on the Internet. The last thing a scammer wants you to do is take your time deciding what to do. This is for many reasons. For starter, the longer you take to decide, the better the chance you have of determining that it is a scam. Also scammers don’t use the same email addresses for too long because they either get shut down or because people have become aware that they are being used to commit fraud, so scammers need you to reply before they move on to their next scam, and their next email.So scammers will make up a plethora of reasons why you have not got long to respond to them. Popular reasons for Advanced Fee Fraud state the corrupt government is trying to get “your” money, and you need to reply fast to better the chances of retrieving it before they do. Check cashing scams masquerading as job offers will claim the job is only on offer for a small amount of time. This sense of urgency scammers often create is not even limited to email fraud, but many fake “get rich quick” schemes we see on the Internet will use techniques where they will get the victim to believe there are only a certain amount of copies of a particular “product” left and if you don’t buy it now you may lose out for good. Also the "special offer" or "limited offer" garble may be used to hurry users as well.
A particularly audacious example of this we have seen was the promotion of Vincent James book “teaching” you to become a millionaire in 2 years – the product was of course a scam, but upon visiting the website, there was a big red sign on the right saying only “37 copies left” and a countdown from 4 minutes, just below, making its way to zero. Refreshing the page caused the countdown to reset back up to 4 minutes, proving it was just a technique to rush victims into buying a shoddy product. We visited the same site a few weeks later, and hardly surprising there were still “37” copies left.
5. Paying with Checks (and forwarding money)?
Of course this tactic is primarily used in Check cashing scams, such as fake job offers or certain types of scams on auction sites like EBay. With credit and debit cards becoming the norm when it comes up paying for services online, and electronically transferring money to bank accounts has become the norm for paying employees, it is becoming more and more easy when trying to spot check cashing scams, since the scammers insist on paying you with old fashioned checks, which will – after a few days – bounce. Often the scammers will make up a reason why you have to send a percentage of the check somewhere else, and this is how they make their money. The checks take time to clear, but when you send a percentage of the check on, it ends up being out of your own money. Excuses why scammers will ask you to forward a percentage of the check on can vary, but we’ve seen reasons like the victim has been overpaid, or the “job description” includes sending money on and keeping a percentage. A nearly identical and updated version of check cashing scams is done through fake money transfer scams. Especially watch out for scammers insisting on paying via MoneyGram or Western Union. The scammers still ask you to forward a percentage of the money wired to you on to somebody else, often for the same reasons, but ultimately the money transferred to you either gets reversed or is stolen so you still end up losing the money you forwarded. So avoid schemes which ask you to receive money and forward a percentage of that money on to somebody else, whether it be by check or money transfer.6. Unexpected Fees
This sign is usually isolated to Advanced Fee Fraud because the victim paying “fees” is the premise of the scam – its how these types of scammers actually make their money, but it is worth mentioning so we can highlight some common examples of what fees you are expected to pay that show up in many scams.Probably the most common is the “release bond” which is sometimes referred to as a “security fee” – the scammers will usually say that you have to pay this for some sort of insurance so their bank will release the money to you. It is a common reason because it is successful as the victim assumes it is a one off and final payment just before they get the massive amount of cash promised to them by the scammer.
Another popular charge is “bribes” – as most Advanced Fee Fraud is committed in Nigeria or other African nations, the scammers often lie about corrupt governments and government officials that usually need “bribing” or the transfer won’t go ahead. This is a classic “unexpected” charge the scammers like to use, and will often claim they have paid some of the bribe and the victim needs to pay the rest.
Another example is the fraudster will claim you need your own bank account in the country of origin, with a certain amount already in it. The scammer informs the victim that they will set up the account; the victim is just required to send the funds to put into the account. Also, the scammers will claim you need to obtain some sort of certificate, an example we have seen in the “anti drug/terrorist” clearance certificate, whatever this is. Needless to say, the scammer expects you to pay for it.
Courier fees are another popular example of charges the victim is expected to pay. The scammer will use the excuse that there is too much money at stake to do a simple bank transfer and the victim needs to pay for the couriers to deliver it by hand. Related to this are security fees for the courier also. This is the majority of possible charges scammers use but by no means a full list. The charges and fees scammers make up vary depending on the type of scams out there, and there are a diverse amount of scams circulating the Internet. Also the fees we’ve already mentioned may be presented to the victim with a different name like “handling fees” or “processing fees” – though it is all the same. Made up excuses for the victim to pay the scammer. Be very sceptical when asked for money over the Internet by somebody that you do not personally know. Also it should be noted on this point that scammers often ask for your bank details and copies of identification such as passports. Again you should never send these over the Internet to people you do not know.
7. Sympathy
Many scammer will pray on the sympathetic and compassionate, by creating a “sob story” – this can vary but common examples include the person sending the email or someone close has serious health problems and needs the victim to help them by accepting money from them for whatever reason. The scammer presumes that if the victim feels sorry for them then they are more willing to cooperate. Also another example is the scammer will explain how difficult life is in their country and how they are trying to be honest. An example of this is the “honest Nigerian banker” variant of 419 scam, where the scammer will tell the victim that they are new to their profession and have come across your details, and that you are due a lot of money, but the Nigerian government or the bankers superiors are not willing to let the money go. Again be extremely sceptical of people trying to pull your heart strings through an email.8. Poorly constructed websites
Most types of email scams are perpetuated through email alone, but a significant number of scams like fake job offers will create fake websites to promote the scam, in order to get the victim to further believe the scam. The websites however, are often poorly constructed, with bad grammar, spelling mistakes and don’t really do a whole lot. We investigated a check cashing scam disguised as a job offer for a travel agency called Petra Tour. The website for Petra Tour seemed legitimate enough, actually quite professional for a scam site, but we noticed the “Book Now” links didn’t do anything, they were just for show. Two fake Internet start-ups asking for investors, Tazoodle and Buzzbot, both had poorly constructed websites, with dead links and poor layout. Just because someone can show you a website in no way guarantees an opportunities legitimacy.9. Email Only
Not true in a small amount of cases, but true is most, is the scammers need to hide his identity by using means of communication that won’t allow a potential victim to trace them. The easiest way to do this is hiding behind web based email as we discussed earlier. It is true that in some cases scammers have spoken to victims or even met them in person, but most of the time they will refuse to speak to customers over the phone or to meet them in person, nor will they offer mailing addresses. Be extremely sceptical of people only willing to converse through email. However, as we mentioned before, some fraudsters are willing to speak over the phone or meet in order to scam you out of money, so this is not a definitive sign.10. If it’s Too Good to be True, It Probably Is!
Our final indicator is a truly universal one that practically encompasses all Internet scams. A scammer knows that people aren’t going to jump through hoops for them unless they have a pretty significant motivation, and with 99% of scams out there, its money. What is more motivating than financial freedom for little effort? It is true that people make money all the time on the Internet, but what people often don’t understand is that it takes time, dedication, luck and hard work. Scammers usually fake easy ways to earn a fortune which simply never exists. There are no easy ways to make large amounts of cash online, and no one is ever going to genuinely just hand over great riches to you, nor offer you the “secret” recipe to great riches. If you come across an offer claiming to make you a millionaire or something to that effect, stand back and use your common sense.Craig Haley
ThatsNonsense.com
