You may have heard of the “Nigerian prince” that scammed people out of thousands and possibly millions of dollars. Although most people know about the prince, scammers have devised numerous methods to trick you and they are still out there.
Phishing and email scams still cost us millions of dollars of year. Unfortunately, they can be rather sophisticated and of prey on people less familiar with personal security
Don’t let you or your family fall victim to these schemes. Read on to learn all you need to know about how to protect yourself from Internet scams.
The ‘Art’ of Scamming People
As long as people have had possessions, other people have tried to find ways to take them.
We don’t have enough time today to talk about every scam, fraud, or other con because we’d need a whole book for that. However, it has been going on for thousands of years and mankind has invented hundreds of ways to hustle money from victims such as:
Lamartine the Scammer
One of the classic scams involved a man who went by the name of Lamartine in the late 1800s.
He used to travel for free by pretending he was suicidal at the hotels he stayed at. He was so convincing that he would get free room and board and the local townsfolk would raise money to give him a parting gift out of sympathy.
This case shows how ruthless scammers take advantage of our good faith.
Modern Email Scams
Fast forward a few hundred years. We like to think that we would never fall for such a scam because, today, we’re all just so clever, right?
Unfortunately, scammers have also gotten better. They use any technology available to them, including texts and email. Check out this article about the top cybersecurity threats companies are facing today.
Advance-Fee Scam
The famous Nigerian prince is an example of an advance-fee scam but there are numerous variations of this famous threat to email security.
In the classic example, victims would receive an e-mail from someone claiming to be a wealthy African prince in political trouble. His billions are being frozen by the banks but, if you pay him just a few thousand dollars, he’ll be able to wire his money out of the country.
In exchange for your troubles, he promises to send you a few million after you help him. Of course, it’s all a lie and you lose the money because the ‘prince’ was actually a conman from Louisiana.
Phishing Scams
The goal of ‘phishing’ is to extract all of your sensitive personal information. This can happen a number of ways through phone or email.
Generally, the scammer will pose as a legitimate agency representative who simply needs to ‘update’ your information. The victim unknowingly relinquishes all their private info to a scammer.
Fake Antivirus
You may have gotten e-mails about antivirus software. Oftentimes, they will tell you they already detected a virus on your computer.
However, in order to delete the virus, you need to upgrade to the paid version of the software.
They are designed to look professional. However, the company is completely fake and will not protect your computer.
Protect Yourself on The Web
In many ways, the internet is its own virtual world. We may be aware of how to protect ourselves in the physical world but the internet has its own rules.
Never give out your personal information or money to anyone on the internet you don’t know. Always keep a lookout for phishing or other email scams.
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