Internet scams are becoming increasingly sophisticated and clever and, according to a recent article on the Guardian, are costing Britain in the region of £2.7bn a year. That’s a lot of money gone to scams and cons!
The research was commissioned in an attempt to try and understand the profile of online scam victims. This way they could built up a picture of the typical victim and then help people to become savvier.
It’s really interesting to read this piece. Here you have an outline of the different scams that can crop up, the scams that are more likely to affect men, and the scams that are more likely to affect women. The overall result, however, was that women were more likely to be the victims.
So, how do you recognise a scam? How do you know if you’re being directed to a false site, instead of the one that you were planning to visit? There is a lot of advice on the net to help you with this and all of it is worth reading.
The website Know The Net also has a threat test that you can take to see exactly how well you are coping in the realm of recognising online scams. I have to tell you, I went ahead and did this test feeling super confident about my scam tracking abilities and my results were interesting.
Nobody is scam-proof all of the time. I remember once getting a message on MSN messenger from an old friend that said, “Hey check out the photo of my wedding.” She had actually gotten married quite recently so I didn’t think twice about entering my Facebook password to access the site.
Then something niggled me and I realised that the site didn’t have a proper address, didn’t quite look right, and shouldn’t have asked me for my password in the first place. You’ve never seen anyone change passwords and details so fast in your life. I must have beaten the bad guys to the punch, but it left me pretty paranoid.
So, if you happen to be a massive fan of the web (as I am) and do a lot of online shopping or banking, access a lot of social networking sites and live through email, then I really do recommend you take this test and see how you rank.
Don’t get caught by these scams and stay safe online. It’s the best way to make sure that your hard earned money stays with you, and doesn’t amble off with some con artist who has a way with the web.
