3. The Phishing Scam
You receive an email from a familiar company/enterprise such as your bank, university, or a retailer you visit often. The message written in that email directs you to a site–usually to check personal information such as email addresses and passwords–and then steals your information and exposes your computer to attack by scammers.
Just like the 419, phishing scams are also some of the most common scams out there. According to a CNBC report, phishing scams actually resulted in approximately $5.2 billion in losses between 2013 and 2016, with the average scam costing victims as much as $130,000.
Do not click on suspicious links from suspicious companies! So, even if the sender may seem legitimate, virtually no reputable institution or company will ask for your password or other key personal information online. Look for grammatical errors and typos in that email, because phishing emails will often contain plenty of them.
If you get stung by number 4, it will absolutely be a disaster…..
13 thoughts on “8 Online Scams People Are Falling for Right Now”
It would be helpful to know how to report scam emails. I used two listed on the internet and both bounced back as unknown
All offers are a scam. No one will ever send u anything or give you $$ through email. Use every email from the unknown as entertainment. Lol. Any common address report it to spoof @ whatever bank etc it is. Prob won’t stop it but u did what u could do. Report it
There’s a new scam out there. This one really made me feel like an idiot. LinkedIn, I’m a member, as are several thousands of people. I was approached by a fellow offering me a job. This job would be for data entry, 7- hours a week and paid $1000 weekly. Also, payday would be weekly. Ok sounds good so far. They send me the application I fill it out and sent it back. Then I am told to use the company account to pay off my credit cards. Okaaaay. I do this. Then I am asked to go to Best Buy and purchase 2 specific apple laptops. Ok. Then before going home, I am asked to send them in to have the proprietary software put on. Ok. Guess what, I have not gotten the laptops back and they reversed the payment. Not only do I not get the laptops, I also got charged for them. Sooo, I am now out $6000 + dollars and am pretty pissed off. Beware, people. If it sounds too good to be true it generally is. I’m a disabled veteran who could not afford something like this and really feel pretty stupid.
Where is your common sense?
Excellent information. One that you didn’t include and I (almost) fell for. You receive an email from an E-tailer you use regularly, confirming your order of something expensive. You, of course, did not order such a thing. On the email is a line that says “…if this is not your order, or have questions…” or something to that effect, you are given a number to call. DO NOT call that number! It puts you in touch with the scammers, who will try to get you to let them into your computer remotely or sell you software to make your computer invulnerable. You could lose everything! Call the E-tailer at a number you know is genuine and report the attempted fraud. [You may or may not want to publish this, but the E-tailer in question was Amazon. They tried the same thing on me as Norton, but I recognized his voice and told him so. Funky emails have stopped]
I to have received the same two scams as James. The emails from Amazon and Norton. I get them all the time. It is ridiculous how many scams are out there.
what about companies asking to do auto refinancing at a lower interest and lower your payments?
Sounds legit – You will probably lower your monthly payment, but you will be starting over to repay your loan. Overall, your monthly payment will be less, but the total amount to repay will be greater. Depending on your situation (i.e., pay less per month or pay more over time), one will be better than the other for you. Also, watch out for processing fees that they may try to add for doing this service. Good luck.
The best information email I have ever read. Publish it every three months. I have been approached in enter two of the listed scams. I find it fun to play with them but never get sucked in.
Perhaps we may want to let these scammers know that if they are caught that death is what awaits them, an then let’s see how many want to continue.
My other half got fished with a fake PayPal email we caught it when we posted a couple things on eBay when all of a sudden there was a pair of jet skis posted to his account he never answered another email without checking with me first. We were lucky though that it didn’t cost us anything
I didn’t yet fall on this scam, keep getting scam calls every single day from different numbers from all over the US, about expiring my car warranty and respond immediately before they close my file, I tried few times to know what is going on my car warranty, I spoke to the agent which car you are talking about ( I owned 3-4 cars) they don’t even know any of my cars brand name or anything and tried to get info about my car and scam me, the conversation ends up on using bad words. Most of the time they hang up and tried from different numbers, sometimes if I am in a good mood I will answer and fry them up, but they never stop.
Extremely helpful