Hi again to all my readers. I haven't wrote until now about Internet scams, because they weren't so frequent, but in the past few weeks I see that they intensified their activity. And, what's worse, they are coming up with new strategies.
I suppose that everybody knows the old ones, with the poor Russian family, with the lottery prize and with the relatives of dead generals or ministers from countries like Senegal, Nigeria and, more recent, Iraq. The common thing to all these attempts id that they are coming as SPAM emails. Do not trust anyone who send you an unsolicited email, no matter what you read inside.
The usual one, with the lottery prize had made a lot of victims until now. You are announced that you are the lucky winner of a great prize of hundreds of thousands of dollars from some lottery based on email addresses and you have to give some personal information to cash your prize. The purpose is to get your personal dates and to practice the so called "Identity theft". Every lottery from every country has a web page, if you look in Google Search you will find it, and all of them make very clear their program and their procedures. Maybe there are few differences from case to case, but there is one rule which is universally available. YOU CAN NOT WIN IN ANY LOTTERY IF YOU DON'T PLAY.
The poor Russian family with bank accounts of millions of dollars from dead relatives and the descendants of generals and ex-presidents of African countries are proposing you to help them to recover their fortune and to share it with you. There is no place in this world where you can just go and say: "Hey, I am John Doe and I am the legal inheritant of the ex-president Madomba!". You will just be fooled to pay some fees to fictive legal counselors or government taxes, and you will never see your money back.
Whenever you are buying something online, do it through well known payments systems. I imagine that everyone knows about Paypal and ClickBank, companies with tradition and solid reputation. These companies gives the possibility to any merchant to open an account with them and to sell their stuff through their system, and gives you the insurance that they will track every transaction which you are making through them, offering you an excellent support. There are rumors that Paypal is rigid with the merchants and shut down accounts very easy, but I am glad hearing that. It means that they keep an eye on every transaction and when they find something unclear, they are in action. I had once the occasion to be scammed by someone on Paypal, and they solved it in three days. I trust them more than myself.
The new strategy I was talking about is that you receive an email from some bank with common name, (I received until now from "Liberty Reserve" and from "CitiBank"), where you are announced that your account is blocked and you need to reset your information in order to open it, or that someone has accessed illegally your account and you need to reset your information. No serious bank in this world would ask you private information on the Internet as long as you don't have an account with them. Do not answer to these emails, and, if you have the opportunity and the time, report them as spam.
The solution I was talking about is a free on line plug in from Mozilla Firefox. It is called WOT, (Worth Of Trust), and every time when you are accessing a web page or you are hovering a link in your browser, it gives a trustiness degree. When you are accessing a web page with bad reputation you are warned very clear about the reputation of that site. I am using it for some time and I have convinced myself that it is very useful. The Firefox browser is free to download, very easy to install and you may install the WOT plug in in the very same moment you have installed the Browser.
If you want to know more benefits of the Firefox browser, visit my site. Until the next time, I wish you good luck and may the Google be with you!
The author is running a website, "Affiliate Marketing Step By Step", where you can find detailed documentation on how to start a home business at no cost. You may find out also interesting things on his blog, "I Am An Affiliate!". You will receive a lot of tips and gifts related to Internet Marketing.