Internet Email Scams

Recently there have been a growing number of Internet email scams as more and more people are trying to get easy money online. Many innocent victims have a tendency to fall prey into these scams because they are unaware of the various rip-offs that are rampant on the Internet.

One such rip-off is the notorious Nigerian email scam. In the email, the scammer from Nigeria pretends to be seeking an abroad partner in order to help transfer a huge sum of money (up to US$20 over million). If any victims fall into the trap, the fraudster will somehow or rather request payment from the victim insisting that they are meant for legal costs in order to withdraw the money to be shared with him or her, but obviously none of that is true.

In other email scams, if any email states that you are required to pay an upfront fee in order to get your credit card loan, then it most certainly is a scam. No legitimate credit card companies will demand money from you during a loan application. Why should they ask for your money now when they are going to send you loan money later? Besides, you have to submit a loan application before any company processes your loan. Should you have never applied for such loans before, then any emails about loan approvals you receive are likely scam. In fact, credit card companies do not normally send out emails to their customers.

We've also seen or at least heard of lottery email scams before. Most people have received such spam emails in their inbox. They are however easy to identify as scam. Typically, these scam emails claim that you have won several million (or even billion) dollars, but they first require that you send it a small fee as processing charges. Now why in the world would they care about the little processing fee? As if they could not deduct it from your winnings or at least forego the little amount...

Another infamous type of email scam is the phishing emails and websites. These emails make you believe that they are sent from the credit card companies or banks. In recent cases, the emails were sent as if from PayPal, a popular online payment processing service. What these emails do is redirect you to a fake website (with similar interface as your bank's login page), and make you input your account details such as login id, password, and PIN number.

Lastly is the overpayment email scam. These are the type that manipulates you (as the seller of an item, usually on eBay) and makes you think you can make an online sale with a higher profit. The buyer is supposedly from overseas. He guarantees to pay you more than the selling price if you are can send him money first to settle the customs and international delivery fees.