The best way to learn about online scams is through case-studies. What is the structure of the scam? How does the criminal attempt to extort money from the victim? What techniques does the predator use? How much is at stake for the victim? Such questions will be analyzed by Global Web in the three online scams case studies below.
- “The Nigerian scam”: The online scam known as the “Nigerian scam” has nothing to do with Nigeria. On the contrary, the scammer uses your empathy and desire to help to wring you of your money. How does it work? The victim receives an email from, supposedly, a member of a prominent and very wealthy family in Nigeria. In the email, the victim is beseeched to help the “Nigerian” transfer a huge sum of money to a given church. The victim is promised a large portion of the family money, if they agree to help transfer the money out of the country by covering legal fees, since apparently, the family money cannot be used until it has been taken out of Nigeria. The victim keeps paying and paying until they realized that the who deal is a scam.
- “Lottery Scam”: This kind of scam takes advantage of the dream of wealth of the victim. In this scam structure, the scammer uses descriptive language and promises of luxury and riches to cause the victim to forget reality. Indeed, the whole premise of the scam is that the victim has hit big in the ultimate lottery, and is now rich enough to never work and to afford practically anything. However, the victim is made to forget that they never, in fact, even joined a lottery! Thus, the victim may be lured into paying necessary “processing fees” to receive the lottery money, only to discover that the whole thing was a scam, and that the criminal who stole a few thousand of your dollars is nowhere to be found.
- “Phishing Scam”: This may be one of the most popular scam out there today. The idea of the scam is to lure the prey into divulging personal information to the predator, such as a PIN number or password. The predator emails you pretending to be a reputable bank or another legitimate payment authority. Then, you are encouraged to follow a link to page that seems legitimate, and asked to “verify your identity” by inputting your personal information. From there, by stealing your identity, the scammer can commit multiple, highly damaging acts that can rob you of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Thus, the core message one can take from the above: use caution. Never trust an email that resembles one of the above, and never divulge your information without thinking twice. There are definite risks to using the internet, but, luckily, there also mechanisms in place that protect you from criminals. Global Web, a top-tier online payment processing company, secures the channel between customer and merchant during online transactions. Global Web, using advanced technology, allows the two parties to safely engage in their online purchasing and selling.
More About Global Web
Global Web is a leader in the payment processing and subscription management sector. The company not only manages payments and subscriptions for its clients, but it also offers extensive consulting services. With Global Web, clients can safely process subscriptions, and take advantage of consultation on payment management matters. Global Web may be contacted at (877) 855-1753 or via Facebook, Google+ or Blogger.
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