by Mike Lazear, PICurrent Assistant Producer
Not everybody online is trustworthy. In the real world it can be much easier to spot the shady-looking car salesman or the moving company with the unmarked van as being a potential threats. But in the world of the internet you cannot actually see who you are dealing with. As a result, it is much easier to fall for various scams and be swindled by technologically savvy con-artists.
Websites like craigslist.org and even job-search engines like monster.com and careerbuilder.com are wonderfully useful resources, but they are literally teeming with con artists these days. Craigslist has at least cracked down on some of these people by warning users to only deal with local people who you can meet with face to face.
It can often be extremely difficult to tell who is selling you something legitimate and who is trying to take your money and hide. Never fear though, because I have three tips that will prevent just about anything bad from happening to you online, short of your mother posting your embarrassing baby pictures on her blog.
- Never give out your social security number, address, or credit card numbers online except to trustworthy institutions. How do you know if a company is trustworthy? One way is to check the url at the top of the page. Does it say “https” instead of “http”? If so, you can generally assume that you have a secure connection and any information you send is probably safe. This isn’t a hard rule, but it generally holds true.
- Do not give any financial information, or heaven forbid, any money to anybody who claims they can make you money overnight. Assume it is a scam and move on.
- Turn your e-mail filters to a very high level, or get a gmail account. Either of these will prevent potentially dangerous e-mails (either through malicious attachments or persuasive content) from reaching your inbox.
There are other things you can do to protect yourself, of course. Use your best judgement. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is. If something seems fishy even in the slightest, don’t trust it. This doesn’t mean that you should never do online business, but in general try to deal with sources that you trust.
If you think you have been scammed, contact your bank and try to put a hold on any payments you have made. Sometimes this can prevent a transaction from going through. If you discover that you have been ripped off by a company that is not legitimate, you may also want to change your credit-card number (that you made any payments with) for safety.
Check out the Better Business Bureau and Rip-Off Report for information on malicious companies.
[...] Today we continue our look at internet scams and identity theft. You can find our previous posts here and here. Our sister site, The Beehive, also has a great section on protecting yourself from [...]
Good info. Thanks for the mention.
Don’t be fooled with online scams, they really sucks! I got a lot of e-mails every now and then telling me some sort of winning but actually will scam you if you’ll attentively reply to them with your personal information.