Give disaster fund scamsters the cold shoulder

If you're hoping to support Japan during its time of crisis, watch out for these scams...

It's a very hard-hearted person who fails to be moved by the suffering of the victims of the twin horrors of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. And our sympathies go to the Japanese people as a whole as well.

All we can do – at some 6,000 miles distant – on a practical level is to give to charities that can make a difference on the ground. Although I can't – and wouldn't – suggest a charity to support, the British Red Cross, Oxfam, Save the Children and World Vision are amongst those with active projects in Japan seeking financial help.

But this disaster has already been seen as an “opportunity” by one set of sick folk – the online scamsters who have already set up phoney internet sites in an attempt to divert our money into their pockets. It happened with Hurricane Katrina and again with the Haiti earthquake and it is already happening with the Japanese double disaster. They don't waste any time in turning tragedy into an illegal profiteering racket.

Some attempt to get high up a search engine list so if you type in “Japanese disaster charity”, you may get fraudulent sites on the first page. These will be similar to real sites so you might have Oxfamm.com or Oxxfam.org instead of the real Oxfam.org.uk.

This is known as “typosquatting” - using website addresses that look genuine at first glance but which are marginally different. The dishonest sites will attempt to look just like the real thing.

A second typosquatting scam is to collect cash from those who misspell addresses. Some keyboarding mistakes are quite common – confusing letters that are next to each other, for instance. Scamsters know how to profit from that.

Remember that even a few successes a day is a lot better than working.

The third attack comes from emails – again purporting to come from real charities. It's quite easy to set up an email address which looks legitimate.

All of these methods both allow criminals to pocket your cash – and harvest your card details for future use.

One email that could be popping into your inbox any moment looks as though it comes from the British Red Cross – one of the charities most involved. Scamsters have already sent out phoney appeals purporting to come from the Red Cross – the Federal Bureau of Investigation has already warned US citizens about this.

The British Red Cross was also heavily hi-jacked during the Haiti disaster – you can see some examples here.

These letters contain harrowing details of the tragedy and are designed to look as though they are written by the charity. But they have several tell-tale scam signs.

One give-away is the lack of a pound sign. They'll use GBP instead of £ because the £ is specific to UK keyboards (you can find it elsewhere but that takes effort).

Another red signal is asking you to send money via transmission sites such as Western Union or Moneygram. These enable the scamsters to collect the cash at their convenience. Charities never use this method. They want you to send money directly to them – in the UK, this enables good causes to collect GiftAid tax relief.

In any case, charities rarely send emails for fund raising. Nor do they tend to use social media such as Twitter and Facebook to raise cash.

To give money safely, always check the site first, never use any payment method that involves cash, and always make sure the charity is UK recognised so it can claim Gift Aid tax relief. If you are not sure, Oxfam and British Red Cross are among charities which have shops in most areas. These can accept a donation or advise on how to send larger sums of money.

Award-winning scams expert Tony Levene explains why he's writing a blog about scams and why he is The Scam Magnet!