Phishing is a type of fraud in which people are tricked into providing information such as passwords, usernames and bank account data that can be used to gain unauthorized entrance to accounts. In one of the simplest and most common types of phishing, the scammer sends e-mails providing a link to a web site and tells [more...]
If you’ve ever received an e-mail asking you to enter account information at some rogue web site, you’ve been the would-be victim of a phishing attempt. Every hour, thousands of Internet users are targeted. While there is no way of protecting yourself 100 percent of the time from every possible Internet threat, there are some [more...]
You may come across appeals for donations to charity in many ways. You may receive a leaflet through your letter box asking for unwanted items or clothing for the third world. Or perhaps someone calling at your door collecting money, or an advertisement in the media, or an unsolicited telephone call. All these methods may leave [more...]
A takeover fraud is when a criminal obtains access to details of a person’s account, for instance, a bank or credit card, and operates it for their own benefit or another’s. In other words, hi-jacks the account. This can be via the internet by sending out false emails requesting a person to log into his [more...]
One day you may receive in your email in-box, or through a chat-room, what to appears to be a tempting job offer involving working from home. Each email is worded differently but most will suggest that you could be an important person in their business: Financial Manager or ‘our US Representative’. What it goes onto reveal [more...]
A boiler room scam is a fraud where you are sold shares in a company that either does not exist, or is a very high risk share which will invariably fail because they are overpriced, cannot be easily sold on and have little real value. It has international dimensions with perpetrators and victims in North [more...]
In this age of the email and texting, millions of postcards are still sent every day, but in the early days of postcards they were an equivalent of an email or text message. Short messages in a cheap and useful format which saved the trouble of having to write a formal letter with an envelope. [more...]
All Ponzi schemes are based on maintaining the illusion that profits are being generated, when the “profits” are really new money being invested into the scheme. Therefore, the Ponzi scheme depends on a constant influx of new members, or of new money from existing members. When the flow of new money dries up, the scam [more...]