Top Online Scams

Just as the Internet makes it easier for legitimate purposes, it also makes it easier for scammers, scam artists and other online thugs to carry out their virtual crimes, impacting our real-life finances, security and peace of mind.

Online scams are constantly evolving, but here are the most common ones today. If you discover that you need to remove spyware, be sure to use the best free spyware removal tools.

Phishing Scams

Phishing emails attempt to trick the victim into visiting a fraudulent website in disguise so that it looks like a valid e-commerce or banking site. The victims believe that they are logging into their real account, but instead, everything they enter in the fake site is sent to the scammers. Armed with this information, the scammer can erase the victim’s accounts, run their credit cards or even steal their identity.

Nigerian 419 Scams

Nigerian 419 scams (also known as advanced Fee Fraud) go back to the days when fax machines and postal mail were the main business communication tools. Nowadays, email is the preferred method of these scammers and there are more scams and victims of Nigerian advanced tariff fraud 419 than ever.

Greeting Cards Scams

Greeting card scams arrive in an email that pretends to be from a friend or relative. Usually, clicking on the link to see the card leads to a web page with booby traps that downloads Trojans and other malicious software on the systems of the trusted ones.

Shopper-Needed Check Fraud Scam

The scam that the buyer needs sends the ‘new hire’ a check for a few hundred dollars, and tells them to collect the check and collect their share, then send the “remaining funds” to the “employer”. Of course, the check is false, will rebound over time and you, the victim, will be responsible for the funds you spent on the check, plus the service charges or fines that result.

Forwarding and Processing of Fraud Payments

The ad should read: Help is sought to illegally launder money on behalf of criminals. But it does not. Instead, it presents the offense in soft terms such as ‘payment processing’ and ‘forwarding transactions’. Do not be fooled: victims are not only involved in illegal activities, but they will also be on the legal hook for the total amount transferred and the resulting fees.

Winning Lottery Scams

Lottery winners scams try to trick recipients into believing they have won large sums of cash, and then take them out of their own lot in a similar way to Nigeria’s 419 scam.

Pump and Dump Stock Scams

Pumping and unloading scams send large volumes of email that purport to reveal confidential information about a particular stock in an attempt to inflate the price.

Scams of Fraudulent Links

Scams, in general, are the new method of delivering malware. Social engineering is the norm. Falsifying a link is the hallmark of phishing scams, trojan downloaders, and other web-based malware. And everything is trivially easy to do, using basic HTML.

Killer Spam: Hitman’s Email Threatens Recipients

Imagine opening your email inbox and reading a message from an alleged killer who says you are the target. It sounds like something out of a horror movie, but it has been happening in real life to hundreds of people. The essential part of email is paying the murderer thousands of dollars or dying.

Scareware Scams

Scareware mistakenly states that the system is infected and tells the user to buy a ‘full version’ to clean out the fake infections. Sometimes, the user who is the victim of an advertising scam installs a fake antivirus software. Other times, a malicious antispyware scanner can be installed by exploit, which is called “drive-by installation”. Regardless of how malicious software is installed, the user is often left with a system that is paralyzed and hijacked.

To avoid becoming a victim, before installing any software over the Internet, look up the name of the product online. Do not skip this step and you will go a long way towards a safer online experience.