Popular Email Scams on the Internet Today
Phishing Scams:
Phishing is a very popular scam on the internet today. Its purpose is to gain access to information pertaining to bank accounts, credit cards, social security numbers, pin numbers, passwords, or any other information the scammers can use for financial gain. The main purpose for this scam is identity theft.
The phishers send out emails that appear to be from a company you normally do business with. They include a link in the email for you to follow to go to the company website. When you click the link and go there, it looks the same as the company site, but it is a fake website designed by the scam artist. You have been asked to go to this website to update your personal information. If you follow their instructions and do this, your information will be in the hands of criminals. They will use this to withdraw money from your bank or credit card account, and perhaps even obtaining new credit cards in your name and maxing these out.
Phishers even target well-known companies by imitating their emails and websites. Companies such as EBay, PayPal, Bank of America, Wachovia bank and others have all been used by phishers in an effort to steal money from their customers.
Work-At-Home Scams:
These types of scams can be very attractive to someone needing money. They claim to show you how to make lots of money from home with no experience and a small investment. They offer “secrets” to making tons of money working at home for a few hours a week. It is often said these are the secrets “gurus” used to generate thousands or millions of dollars monthly or yearly on the internet. These get rich quick programs will cost you from $20 to hundreds of dollars to receive your success kit that will not earn you a cent.
These opportunities may involve anything from pyramid schemes to crafts, stuffing envelopes, medical billing, data entry, and more. They will ask you to pay a fee to get your kit, for instance, the assemble crafts at home scheme. You will be shipped materials and instructions to make a craft. They promise to pay you a certain amount for every piece you produce, however your product will never pass their inspection regardless of how well you do the work.
With the medical billing scam, they will tell you to buy a list of doctors to do the medical billing work for. These may or may not be real doctors and have no interest in your medical billing service.
Credit Repair Scams:
This scam promises to erase your bad credit so you can get a loan, mortgage, credit card, or other form of credit.
This type of service will more than likely cause more problems than it solves. They rarely do what they claim to do and they have been known to recommend fraudulent behavior such as advising you to use a bogus social security number.
Guaranteed loans:
Many emails claim to be able to give you unsecured credit, guaranteed. This includes a credit card without a good credit rating, home equity loans when you do not have any equity in your home.
This is often credit offered by an offshore bank.
This scam is often combined with a pyramid scheme. They want you to refer family, friends, and online associates to buy into the scam and pay you a small commission for your referrals.
The home equity loan consists of a list of lenders who will not loan you money unless you are qualified to borrow it. You never get any credit cards and the pyramid scheme cannot continue to sustain itself and will fail.
Chain letter scams:
The chain letter is an old gimmick. You are asked to send a small payment to around six names on a list and put your name at the top. You then forward the list using bulk mail. This scam will claim to be legal by a technicality such as you are paying to put your name on a list or other nonsense. This is untrue.
Chain letters are illegal for the most part and it is unlikely to gain any money from them. Most lose money when participating in chain letters.
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