Scam Protection

Scams are very similar to phishing, but are not usually interested in obtaining your details, they often appeal to a sense of compassion or to human greed. For instance, almost every disaster (earthquake, flood, war, famine) has generated large amounts of scams, usually in the form of appeals for charitable aid for a 'worthy' cause. Advanced Fee Frauds (sometimes called 419 scams) offer you the opportunity to get a large amount of money by supposedly helping the scammer to transfer even larger sums of money out of a country (often an African country such as Nigeria). These scams always result in you being asked to send the scammer some money to cover "administration" costs (often this is several thousands of dollars). Sometimes, these scams have resulted in the person being scammed disappearing, either killed or kidnapped after traveling to another country to meet their 'benefactor'. In less extreme cases, many people have lost thousands and thousands of dollars to these frauds. Some tips for avoiding such scams:

• Legitimate charities usually only send appeal emails to people who have explicitly chosen (opted in) to receive emails from the organization. Unsolicited, such emails are almost always fraudulent - particularly ones that appear quickly after a disastrous event.
• Don't be fooled by appearance. E-mails can appear legitimate by copying the graphics and language of a legitimate organization. Many include tragic stories of victims of the disaster. If in doubt, go directly to the organization's website, and find out ways to donate from there, and consider checking out the legitimacy of the charity on a site like www.charitynavigator.org
• Don't click through to links: links in emails can lead to "spoofed" Web sites that mirror the look and feel of a genuine organization.
• There's no such thing as a free lunch - If it looks too good to be true, it almost always is.

Scambusters, see: www.scambusters.org, Hoax Busters on Scams, see: http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/HBScams.shtml