March 1, 2008
6 Tips to Avoid the Scammers’ Spell
By admin
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Among the many accidents that can be found along the Internet Highway, the scams are probably the most common. Just in the United States, millions of spam/scam messages are sent daily, by means of tricky, spammy spiders and robots.
I have a few email accounts, one is personal, two are business-related and keep one or two to scam-detection duties. Don’t hurry, I am on my way to explain.
6 Tips to Avoid Being a Victim of Scam
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Don’t, please Don’t you EVER give your personal banking information to anyone at all.
What’s common among scammers is to find increasingly effective techniques to snatch your credit card, bank account info. Bear in mind, that there is no need to give such information.
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PayPal, Credit Cards and Your Bank will not send Emails Asking You to Sign-In.
This is VERY important… that’s the phrase of about 75% of the scam emails I received. Sure, it’s so important and so URGENT (25% has this word) that you have to sign in, right now! Forget about it, if the bank wants you to sign in, Ok, Open a new browser window and type your login and password information there.
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There’s No Way to Earn 1000% Yields from a Small Investment Without Any Effort.
That’s pure crap. There is no way in this life to make good, legal and reliable money without effort. I’ve seen thousands of pages that promise a better life if you just pay a small amount. All of them die a few months later, after taking away a “few” bucks from you.
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Don’t Open Email from a Suspicious Sender.
Yes, right. Many, many people do open all the email messages that they receive. Please, stop and don’t do it anymore, specially if the email seems to include attachments or even worse if it has attachments and has been sent to Junk Email Folder. If you open it - despite and against all my warnings - don’t download the attachments. If you do it - at your own high risk - then, please, don’t open the files that were inside the attachment.
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Have a Cost-Effective Antivirus, AntiSpyware, AntiMalware and Firewall Software Installed.
It does not need to be costly. In fact, I currently use Grisoft AVG, and it works perfectly fine for my personal needs. In a future post, we will evaluate some other antiviral products in terms of cost-effectiveness and protection power. The issue is that many scammers send bots, spyware, virus and so on, to steal information from your personal computers.
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Use a Fool-Proof Email Account to Test.
Yes, that’s my personal contribution to the list. My online experience shows that most of the spam/scam uses to come from online forms, where the user types some personal information and encloses his/her email address. It does not matter if the website states clearly that they will not sell the email address to any marketer (legal or not). Some of them are being honest, but, for the rest of unethical monsters, do enter your fool-proof email, which is an account that you will use for test-purposes only. Once you’re sure that the website is not spamming your test account, you can always change your information, in order to point the communication to your real, current email address.
Last but not least, be wise. Scammers are always exploring new ways of social engineering to get money from you. If you know of better ways to avoid scams, please let us know in the comment form.
Topics: Online Purchase |
4 Responses to “6 Tips to Avoid the Scammers’ Spell”
Comments
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March 18th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
These are great tips and a well written blog. I have book marked your page. Thanks!
March 18th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Hi, Gail:
I added you to my Blogroll also. Many thanks for your comment.
March 24th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
It appears my comments were cut and pasted from a response that I made to the HubSpot Blog on March 17, “7 Beginner Blog Blunders and How to Avoid Them.” I am surprised to see it here. I happened to see this entry on the Google Search Engine and came to investigate. It is unfortunate that this happened.
March 25th, 2008 at 1:34 am
Hi, Gail:
The IP that generated the comment is 68.0.217.152, which is not your IP. I don’t have a clue why the comments were reproduced here. Anyway, I liked your blog and the link will remain in my blogroll for a very long time.
Best regards, Ivan