Scams are divided into sections depending on the intentions of the thief and what they want to steal.  

This is a three-part series covering most of the general ways scammers will try to scam you.

But first, what are they trying to steal?

 

The most obvious is money, and the second less obvious is information.

Here they have three ways of getting your hard-earned dollars out of your wallet or downloading your valuable information.

 

• Email Scams:

• Telephone Scams:

• Website Scams:

 

You may then ask, “What will the thief do with my information?” The answer is simple. They sell it for money. This information may be your name, address, date of birth, or email address. In the case of your email address, the purchaser may start sending you innumerable amounts of advertising material.

 

In the case of your personal information, they may use it to create driver's licenses, allow them to open a bank account in your name or give them voting rights. You may then ask, “What will they do with a bank account in my name?” These bank accounts are usually only opened for a short period of time. (Perhaps three weeks or less.)

 

In part three I will explain how easy it is for them to get your hard-earned dollars into the bank account just mentioned.  

 

Part one: Email Scams

 

Let’s look at email scams in more detail.

In most cases, email scams are designed to gather your personal information. They may also be used to sell you products that never arrive or invoice you for things you never purchased. So, how do they do this? In truth, you give them your information by allowing them to place a small piece of code onto your device, into your modem, or onto your desktop.

 

Let me show you how to protect yourself from allowing this action to take place.

 

Firstly, never open an email and click on any links while crossing the road, being in a hurry, talking to a friend, or driving your car. In short, be fully focused on what you are doing when browsing through your emails.

 

The Header Section of the email:

 

Let’s say you get an email from a company that you have used many times over. The URL of the company may be something like jostle.com. You have received many emails from paul@jostle.com and trust him implicitly. You have bought shoes from Jostle and intend to again in the future.  

 

On this fateful day, as you are drinking your coffee and thinking about your day off tomorrow, you received an email from paul@jastle.com.

 

Paul asks you to click on the link below to see the latest shoe sale, or worse, pay an invoice. Without thinking you click on the link and “BANG”, a small piece of code is downloaded into your system, or you go ahead and pay the $36.95 requested to prevent your account from being, in Paul’s words, “Closed!”

 

Did you notice the obvious mistake? For those who didn’t, the “o” has been replaced by an “a” in the word jostle. Sometimes an l (L) will be replaced by an I (i) in a URL. Hmmm! Very difficult to spot in long URL’s.

 

It’s impossible for a company to purchase every conceivable domain name around their brand. This means that brand names can be spelt slightly differently and then purchased by the would-be thief.

 

Summery 1: Check the spelling of the URL from the sender.

 

The second thing to look for, at the top of the email, is the To: text. Is this your email address, or some random person’s email address that you do not recognize.

 

Summery 2: Check your email address in the header section.

 

Thirdly, check the Heading or Subject Line. Is the spelling correct and does the heading make sense?

Does it come from Paul, or does it come from Pawl!!

 

You know that "Jostle" sells shoes, and not cars, so any subject line that reads “Great Car Offer” should be a warning trigger.

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Summery 3: Read the heading or subject line carefully. Confirm that it makes sense. 

 

Scammers are clever (until they go to prison that is), however, they may stay with the theme of the website like, "New Shoes Just Arrived". If you have checked the URL and it does not match what you expect, delete the email.  

 

Below is a screenshot showing the heading or subject line, the URL and the recipient’s email address.

It’s okay to open the email, however before clicking on any links inside the email, check these three boxes carefully.