The depth, breadth, creativity, and depravity of scams and the scammers that perpetrate them no longer shock or offend. From grandmother scams to online dating scams, identity theft, data breaches, and any form of phishing or advanced fee scams, when you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. But the bad guys continue to find new ways to skin a cat.
The Better Business Bureau and the Consumer Sentinel Network received 725,000 consumer complaints of fraud in 2010. The defrauded consumers who reported fraud last year lost $1.7 billion.
Beware of the following scams.
Auction Scams: This ruse involves fake profiles advertising goods and accepting payments, with no intention of ever shipping any items. Scammers often contact potential victims within an auction website, but then bring communications to outside email or phone.
Q. Do any VoIP services include faxing?
A. That depends whether you’re looking for home or business VoIP. If you’re looking for home VoIP, the only service that also offers faxing is Phone. It’s web-based, so you can send a fax from your browser.
However, for business VoIP, you have many more options. First, there’s Nextiva, which includes one toll-free number, one virtual fax number, and eight local numbers. That’s more than any other VoIP service we review, so we rmend Nextiva if you’re looking to save money. Your only other option for included Internet faxing is RingCentral. If you prefer to pay extra for Internet fax, you can choose from Vocalocity, 8×8, GlobalPhone, Apptix, and Impr.
With consumerism all over the world and rising interest rates, many people are stuck with debt they simply can not afford to repay. So if you are in debt and struggling, you’re certainly not alone. Fortunately, there are debt consolidation services that specialize in consumer credit debt restructuring that could help to change your life and get rid of your debt.
How does debt consolidation woks? This is not another loan. In other words, using the services of credit card debt consolidation, you consolidate unsecured debts to reduce your monthly payments on your credit card statements, etc. Debt relief specialists are hired to negotiate interest rates, get lower price and distribute the monthly payments with each creditor. In general, there are two options. Once negotiations are complete, you will pay each creditor, but pay a fixed monthly sum to the service provider, which is better, arrange to distribute the payment to your creditors. Read more…
Eleven percent of identity theft crimes occur online.
Let’s face it: Almost everyone’s on Facebook, and if you’re not, chances are you’ll succumb to social pressure to sign up eventually. It’s a great way to connect with friends and family all over the world and easily share your experiences with others. However, it’s not a good idea to go sharing personal information willy-nilly.
Facebook has made a number of updates to privacy settings since we wrote this popular post in 2008. So here we’ve collected an updated list of six ways to manage your privacy on Facebook and keep your personal information safe:
1. Limit the amount of personal information available on your profile.
A poll of Facebook usersmissioned by NextAdvisor found that 27% of respondents listed their full name, date of birth, phone number, and email address on their Facebook profile.
While credit card fraud is a form of identity theft, not all identity theft is credit card fraud. It just so happens that identity theft involving credit cards is the type you are most likely to hear about on a regular basis. This type of theft usually occurs in one of two ways: the thief can physically steal a person’s credit card number and then use it to make transactions that do not require photo ID, whether it’s because the purchase is for a small amount, it’s somewhere like a gas pump where there is no clerk present or it is transacted by a clerk who just doesn’t follow procedure by asking to see identification.
The second way is through phishing scams, in which a thief sets up a bogus website and the consumer is fooled into typing in his or her credit card information.
Sometimes home security begins online. Many millions use and rely on PayPal for convenient and secure ecommerce transactions. But is it safe? The short answer is “yes”. The longer answer is “it depends”.
PayPal has numerous redundant measures of protection in place to protect their user accounts. PayPal falls under many of the same rules and regulations as banks and retailers. They don’t have a choice to be secure or not, they have to be.
But PayPal is just like everyone else, they are under constant attack.
Most security issues with PayPal aren’t actually with PayPal at all, but with its users.
1. Don’t click links in emails that come from PayPal. The emails may not be from PayPal but from scammers trying to phish your information. Always directly log into PayPal to access your account.
2. Don’t link your bank account to PayPal.
The Internet Crime Complaint Center fielded 303,809 reports of cybercrime in 2010. Of those cybercrime reports, auction fraud was the third most common complaint.
Auction fraud refers to fraudulent transactions on online auctions. Either a product advertised for sale is misrepresented, or purchases are never delivered at all.
The IC3’s annual report explains, “Historically, auction fraud has been the leading complaint reported by victims, with a high of 71.2 percent of all referrals in 2004. However, in 2010, auction fraud represents slightly more than 10 percent of referrals. This demonstrates the growing diversification of crimes related to the Internet.”
In other words, auction fraud is still profitable for scammers, and they’ve also discovered many new techniques for scamming consumers.
IC3 advises consumers against conducting online transactions with anyone who exhibits the following suspicious behavior:
- The seller creates an online auction as though he resides in the United States, but responds to buyers with an email claiming he’s outside the United States for business reasons or a family emergency.