A List of Common Scams to Avoid

Criminals are ready to take your money. They will not use knives or guns to rob you. They will not break into your house and steal from you when you are away. They will not even need to pick your pocket. Instead, they will gain your trust and confidence, and they will clean out your bank account. There have been many warnings, and you have certainly seem them before, but there are steps you should be taking to protect yourself so you do not fall prey to some of the most vicious schemes into which even honest and educated people can be lured.

Spam

If you have an email account, you are bound to eventually receive spam, and when you receive it, some offers may seem enticing, but you can be sure that if you ever attempt to contact anyone that has sent you a spam email message, you will regret it.

Spam, unsolicited commercial email, originates from various sources which we will discuss later; however, there is only one reason for people to spam. Money. Spammers want your money, and they will not stop trying until they get it. Information is the key to their success because knowledge is power, and every time you click on a link within an email message, even if you do not purchase anything, you are giving the spammer power. That innocent link may appear to be merely a site that provides you with information about possible products that you may not actually want to buy, but you are interested nonetheless. Well, that link had identifying information. Those strange symbols such as ?ID=399D9239FAA393 are really identifiers that will update the databases of spammers. They gain the knowledge that not only is your email address (which they may have spammed randomly) active but that you showed interest in that particular product, and they know that the message passed through all of the spam filters configured by that particular ISP (Internet Service Provider). Therefore, not only are you harming yourself because you will receive more spam, but now the spammers know which campaigns can be used to spam other people using the same ISP as you.