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.
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.
Even though you have a home security system installed…right? You should still hide and lock up your stuff.
Burglars are generally aware that a woman’s jewelry is either in her jewelry box on top of her dresser or in her underwear drawer. For men, it’s in a similar place or sitting in a little dish next to the bed. These methods aren’t exactly covert.
A safe is your best bet. Wall and floor safes can be hidden and other heavy box safes can be bolted to the floor.
Here are some options:
1. Buy or build a “Book Safe”. A book safe is a carved out book containing your most valuable valuables. Here is a DIY security book safe or do a search online and buy one.
2. Hollow out an appliance. If you are mechanically inclined and have nothing more than a screw driver and wire snips you can gut anything from a power strip to a blender to a coffeemaker.
3. Install a fake wall electric outlet or switch.
An excellent way to improve one’s level of security intelligence is to follow the writings of Robert X. Cringley, one of my favorite technology know-it-alls.
Anyway, Cringley’s credit card was recently hacked. And if his card can be hacked, anyone’s can. Like many cardholders, Cringley received a notification from his credit card company’s fraud depar
Reed College’s entire website was recently copied and replicated, but with the fictitious name “University of Redwood.” The Wall Street Journal
Mortgage loans are loans that you take out in order to purchase your house or a property. The house or property that you buy is treated as collateral against this loan. This means that your house will be foreclosed if you default on the mortgage payments. However, it is true that any unforeseen situation may strike you any time for which you may not be able to make your mortgage payments. In such a situation loan modification helps you out.
http://www.floridarefinancemortgagerates.com/ What exactly is loan modification?
As the name suggests, loan modification implies changes in the mortgage plan. Since you are not being able to make your mortgage payments your mortgage repayment plan is modified in order to suit your needs. This alteration that is made of the original mortgage plan in order to accommodate your financial difficulties is called loan modification. Read more…
When a major corporation like Sony gets hit then you know we are all vulnerable. Sony is a great company and like many great corporations is under constant attack. The landscape of information security is changing every day and criminals are aiming their cyber-weapons at the biggest targets in the world.
TechNewsWorld reports LastPass, the password manager was under attack last week. “Users rely on it to store the myriad user names and passwords they inevitably collect as they go about their business on the Web. With LastPass, they only have to remember one single master password. LastPass handles the rest — including, presumably, security.”
Simon Cowells X-Factor show was hit too. The Daily Star reports “Closely guarded secrets about media mogul Simon Cowell and his new US X Factor show have been “stolen” by sneaky cyber crooks.