Today, internet scams are a major threat to online users. With the advent of technology, a huge number of hackers and scammers penetrated in the tech world to get cash and valuable personal information from users. The current generation of Hackers just needs little creativity to fascinate people and steal their cash, information, and identity. As masses have shifted their focus from email services to the social networks, scammers, too, have moved there and plagued online communities with scams and vile stuff. Following are three essential ways that can help you to stay secure while online.
Avoid Guff Facebook Stuff
This scam works in a way to make you believe that friends in your contact list will help you if you come across with any assault or disaster. The scam mostly works on Facebook and Gmail, costing millions of dollars to users. This is simple to implement and a scammer can easily get access to your Facebook account. He then keeps on forwarding messages to your friends, designed simply as: “Help me, I have been assaulted! And robbers took all my stuff including money and all important documents with them.” Scammers then ask your friends to spend some money and help you in finding your documents, to find dwelling and assist them in getting things necessary for existence. Scammers will convince you to send money through untraceable money transfer methods and not through the banking or any secure method. If you get any such scam, try to contact your friend through other means. If you find your friend safe and sound, ask him to change his account’s password or switch on another social networking site. If you have been a victim of such a scam, you should contact an expert local criminal lawyer. For instance, if you are living in Houston, I suggest you contact a professional Houston criminal attorney.
Shun the Snare of Twitter
A known scam, Swarmed Twitter, claims to tell you everything about yourself. It reaches to you by a direct message from any person you follow and looks simple and naïve. The message mostly arrives at you with an attached link holding nasty content. It seems like a friend wants to bring unpleasant things into your notice and you need to deal with the matter consequently. However, it’s a scam, which will hack your account, post on your stream and will send messages to your followers. The attached link will take you to an online survey or any advertising page, designed to earn money for the hackers with every click on the page. Many scams are quite apparent, but still, it is very difficult to resist yourself from finding out what malice is spreading against you. Ignore and delete all such messages to remain safe and if you want to let your affected friend know about this, contact him in person and tell him about his compromised account.
Nigerian Prince Scam
The most familiar scam is Nigerian Prince spam. The scammer sends a simple and sentimental message from Western Africa, which promises to make you rich but asks you for a little amount of money at first. Though this is a highly spread scam of internet history, it is still spreading and gaining the attention of internet users. The spam email claims to be forwarded from a bank in Nigeria and asks you for help. It promises that if you send full name and address, you will get compensation of a hefty sum of money. After replying with details, the bank will send you another mail indicating that your details are not available in their database. They will ask you to send registration fees, and this is how this payment process starts. If you find any such spam, just laugh over and delete it.
With the increased use of the Internet, scammers are finding their ways to deceive you with simple tricks. However, a little wit can help you remain safe online and for this, you only need to verify the source of information.