10 ways to spot a scam

Here are the top 10 ways to spot a scam, according to you, the readers of lovemoney.com!

There are lots of Internet scams, as anyone with an email address surely knows. Reader julian61 wrote that the 'best' one he has ever received "purports to be from the widow of Yasser Arafat, asking for the usual help to get money out of the country."

Mostly, these things aren't funny. Internet and email scams are at best a nuisance. In Don't be a Christmas scam victim, I gave you ten tips to spot scams. It turns out you're all scambusters, as the article attracted many great suggestions. Here I present the best of them:

1. Paypal problems

Trickytimes dodged a common eBay scam and reports it to lovemoney.com:

"A simple trick is offering to pay by Paypal but collecting in person the same day that payment is made. You should never allow this. The likelihood is that the Paypal account will have been set up with a stolen credit card.

You're not covered by Paypal's seller protection if someone collects the goods from you. Anyone selling on eBay and accepting payment by Paypal should read the rules. If you follow Paypal's rules to the letter, Paypal should protect you, up to a point. Read more here and here (and read carefully!).

2. Forward to your email provider

DIYfixer:

"Report scam emails; for instance, if they use Yahoo email, forward these on to abuse@yahoo.com. Most other email providers have the abuse@ facility. This will at least inconvenience the scammers as the email account will be closed."

3. Take frantic action

tedphil advises notifying everyone, including your employer:

"Our youngest lad was scammed last week. We caught on a couple of days later and made frantic phone calls to the bank, his uni and where he works."

4. Report spammers

Winchfield60 shares some tips on reporting spammers:

"If you're getting scam emails, report them free to Spamcop, which blacklists the senders and get their mails blocked. If you get mails purporting to be from a financial institution, forward them to reports@banksafeonline.org.uk. Check out Bank Safe Online's website for more details. The only way to defeat this menace is for everyone to do their bit. Report spam. Don't just delete it!"

He moves on to the problem of email collecting. When you send emails to lots of people, and that gets sent to others, eventually one of them will have a virus that collects all the email addresses in the thread. All of you will then start receiving spam and possibly viruses through your email addresses. Here's how to do your bit on this:

"When you forward an email, delete all of the other addresses that appear in the body of the message. That's right, delete them. Highlight them and delete them. It only takes a second. You must click the Forward button first. If you don't, you won't be able to edit the message at all.

"Whenever you send an e-mail to more than one person, always use the BCC (blind carbon copy) feature for listing the email addresses."

5. Be careful with email addresses

guykguard offers an alternative suggestion for those times when you want others to see the email addresses in the body of your emails:

"The tell-tale @ must be replaced. This is often with "at", but any characters that will be obvious to the addressee will do."

He also suggests a little extra caution is taken with more sensitive emails:

"If any mildly sensitive stuff is to be sent by email, risks of abuse can be reduced by splitting it over two or more emails, sent at different times."

6. Keep your details private

allnew2me advises keeping your private information, erm, private:

"If I ever have to give my date of birth on a Web form, I give Christmas Day or Valentine's Day. Then they don't actually have details that your bank would have, because you never really know how careful these sites are at destroying information."

7. Check the legitimacy of the site

NoddyDog teaches a new trick:

"If you suspect you've been diverted to a bogus website, enter a wrong password. If you're on the legitimate website then it will know that the password is wrong and will tell you immediately. If it takes you to the next page then don't go any further: it'll be a scam.

8. Don't let your guard down

However, thosefoolythings explains that this technique isn't fool-proof:

"Just be aware that there are so-called 'man-in-the-middle' attacks in which the villain passes your replies to (e.g.) eBay, and eBay's responses back to you. Therefore, if you enter a wrong password it will ask you to try again. Don't let your guard down when asked for any sensitive information!"

9. Use your common sense

maskelyne thinks it all comes down to common sense:

"There's an old saying in the con industry: 'You can't con an honest mark'. What this means is that the reason it's so easy to scam people is that you're playing on people's greed and their desire to get something for nothing."

10. Chain spamming

Accountantsmum often gets chain emails. Who doesn't? She has a thing or two to say about these, including:

"The purpose of these chains is to gather email addresses for either viruses or spam. Stop passing on chains, and tell senders not to, so the word spreads!"

I've ran out of space, but take a look through this discussion for more tips. I also liked the comments from londonweb, bojotools, RobbesPierre, UpHillAllTheWay, and edditheseahorse.

I've edited the comments to make them clearer and shorter, but the meaning remains the same.

Get help from lovemoney.com

We've written a lot about scams recently. Take a look at:
The top five sneakiest banking tricks

Watch out for this appalling scam

The top three most dangerous phone scams

The top eight biggest Christmas cons!

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