Protect Yourself From Scammers – Useful Tips

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Everyday unsuspecting people are being exploited, sadly, in part, due to technology. Not only does technology give us great opportunities as a growing society, but it is also opening all kinds of doors and opportunities for the scammers to reach more and more victims, as well as giving them the resources to cover their tracks.

Scammers are people who perpetrate internet fraud schemes on unsuspecting people. Sometimes they work in groups and sometimes they work alone. They work at exploiting the vulnerabilities of others. They are con artists. They are frauds. They will run many types of scams. They may do online scams, or mail scams. They may pull off credit card fraud, identity theft or phishing scams. There are virtually no boundaries for most of these bottom feeders, as they prey on innocent victims. The individuals perpetrating the scams will often befriend the people who they intend to defraud, in order to pull off their scams. In this case, you would be given fraudulent information with the intention of taking advantage or you or your finances for their own personal gain. They often take long periods of time to carefully plan out and pull off their scams, and to fine-tune their strategies, making it hard to detect that a crime has been committed until it is much to late.

Most scammers have the intention of obtaining information and means to access your finances and valuable property. They will often send out phishing scams disguised as e-mails, in which they will pose as well known businesses offering to help you or warning you that your account may be suspended unless you can verify your account information. When you send this information, they take it and often wipe out your bank account, block your access to your accounts, or even open up other accounts and credit cards in your name. And they can have all of this done before you even realize that you have been victimized.

There are many other tactics that those wishing to victimize you will use, as these types of individuals have for centuries. Some more recognizable scam tactics are the “all knowing, future telling psychics.” There are also pyramid scams. They try to get you to sell products, have you recruit people to join under you to sell their products, and promise that all will become rich as the company grows.

Today’s ever advancing technology is making it harder and harder to catch these predators for a variety of reasons. Victims rarely meet the actual criminal, because the crime is carried out via the internet or telephone. It also makes it difficult because most of the individuals instituting the scams have the ability to make factual documents, create fake e-mails and phony websites that even trained individuals often can differentiate from the real thing.

Internet scams are now categorized as internet fraud, and as such can be investigated as a crime scene that requires police investigation. In most cases, due to the complexity and legalities of the crimes, the Federal Bureau of Investigation will head up the search to find the scammers.