10 Common Email & Internet Scams – How to Avoid Them

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10 Common Email Internet Scams How to
Avoid Them
If you ever feel depressed and happen to open
your personal mail account at that time, youll
find mails from lottery companies giving you
money, banks offering you loans, women/men
seeking you from ages, and what not. These mails
that make you feel so lucky pressed Google to
create a separate folder for them called spam.
However, spammers do manage to fool Googles
intelligence and succeed in reaching your inbox
even now. While many adopt the smart way and
ignore such spam my mails, a large majority of
people fall for such scrupulous mails.
Not one email account is spared by these by these
Internet Dacoits who aim to somehow lay their
hands on your personal information like your bank
account details. It is not easy to find a way to
tackle them. If you happen to be their target,
theyll adopt ways to fool you which you could
have never thought of. As the saying goes,
prevention is better than cure. So, instead of
falling for those traps and then wondering how to
get out of it, it is
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better to get yourself armed against it
beforehand by understanding all the
different ways of identifying different types of
internet scams. To help you do that, weve got
this little list containing of 10 of the most
common internet and Email prevalent on the
internet.
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• Random Lottery Scam
• This is by far the most common type of Email scam
  youre likely to come across. In this, you
  receive an email from an account depicting some
  foreign lottery company with a congratulatory
  subject written to catch your eyes.
• Firstly, you can check the senders email address
  to check whether the mail has been sent by an
  individual or a company. Secondly, you can simply
  do a Google check to see if the lottery actually
  exists or not. However, it might be a well
  documented scam that may come with the name of
  some genuine lottery company. Finally, the
  easiest way to figure it out is by checking if it
  is asking you to fill in your details somewhere.
  If that happens, the mail is just an attempt to
  phish you and leave you with an empty bank
  account.

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How to Prevent You just need to remember this
simple logic, you cant win a lottery without
entering it. Even if you do enter, the chances
are next to zero. So, before jumping out of
excitement and landing yourself in trouble, use
your senses and save yourself from this Email
scam. 2. Work-From-Home Job Scam This is one
scam that has trapped many innocent people
desperately looking for ways to earn money
online.  In this, youre offered a job with a
handsome earning and all youre asked to do is
some simple online shopping on some website or
something. Firstly, if youre asked to pay
upfront then youre likely in to get duped by
some online fraudster. Secondly, you might get a
fraudulent cheque to make you believe it is true
and then maybe asked to pay an amount to get you
your training material or something. By the time
you realise the cheque you received has bounced,
youd have already paid a handsome amount to the
fraudster, handed in your bank details, and
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also caught yourself up with a penalty for trying
to encase a fraudulent cheque. How to
prevent Again, simply by using your common sense.
If you havent applied for a job, you wont get
one. Also, if youre asked to spend money upfront
online, do not pay at all. 3. Fake Donation
Scam Social Media has brought in a lot of new
ways for online frauds to loot you. On your
Social media account, you may often come across
posts asking to get shared and the social media
company will pay a certain amount for every
share. Also, the post may contain some bank
account details for you to donate. These posts
are an attempt to earn money through fake
donations or some phishing trick. Detecting these
scams are simple, you just need to look at it and
make out if the account posting it is relevant or
not. The best way to do that is to check when was
the account created.
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How to prevent? Prevention is simple. Donate
online only through registered Organizations like
the Red Cross or UNICEF or any other trusted
name. No matter how real the donation cry looks,
youre not supposed to fall for it. 4. Nigerian
Cheque Scam. You may receive an email from some
Sir Arthur Von-Monsoon or Barrister Frank N.
Stein with a subject requesting you to help
recover a large amount of money from some
overseas bank. In return of your favor youre
promised with a reward of some percentage of the
amount which is enough to woo you reply with your
bank details. In worse cases, you might be asked
to send some processing fees again and again to
get the big prize. Accounts with such names exist
in no part of the world. Royal names or services
have many better ways of getting their problems
sorted than emailing you. All you need to do to
confirm that it is a spam is by simply doing a
Google check. Googles database has almost every
royal services listed in its database.
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How to prevent. Once you receive these emails,
report spam and youre not likely to see those
mails again in your email inbox. 5. The Survey
Scam What can be termed as one of the most
genuine looking scams fooling people across the
internet, The Survey Scam has had a fair share of
spamming peoples email inbox. In this, you
receive a mail asking you to undertake a survey
for some companys promotion and in return youll
get a handsome reward. It all looks good as it is
not asking for any of your personal info.
However, it does ask you to pay some registration
fees which makes it obvious that youre in with
some trouble. The scam is way more serious than
this at times, it attempts for an identity theft
of the receiver. Firstly, do a Google check to
see if any such survey exists or not. Secondly,
unless and until youve enrolled for some survey
list, youll never get any survey mails from any
company.
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How to prevent Prevention is highly sensitive in
these scams. The moment you click on the link in
the mail, a malware gets installed on your device
which signals their success in their attempt of
your identity theft. The most important thing
youre supposed to do is avoid clicking on any
links you receive from unknown senders. 6.
Online Banking or Payment Wallet Scams This is
by far the gravest scam youre likely to come
across on the Internet. In this, you receive a
mail from an account that has a similar name to
the official Bank name or any official wallet you
might be using with a subject like Act now, or
your account will be deactivated, or Security
breach on your account. The moment you read
this, you tend to panic and open the link in the
suspicious mail and go on filling in your details
on a fake website. Detecting these scams is a
tad more difficult. First you need to go to your
official banks or Wallets website and check if
that matches with the link youve just received.
Again, you gotta trust Google with its database
as the website it redirects you will actually be
the genuine one.
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How to prevent. Detecting the scam is almost as
good as preventing these scams. For sure once
youve detected that the mail is a scam youre
not likely to fall for it the next time. However,
once you detect it you should immediately report
the sender, mark spam, and delete the mail. 7.
Hijacked Profile Scam Social Media profile
hacking is easier for the scamsters than we
imagine to be. You might receive a message from
one of your known person asking for your personal
information. These scams are difficult to figure
out and mostly has the person successfully
trapped. The first thing your likely to do is
open the account or profile youre receiving the
messages from and check if its the real person
or someone pretending to be that person. Secondly
check if there is a sudden change in the persons
activity. If yes, then youre good to reject your
fake friends messages. How to prevent. Facebook
constantly reminds you to only add people whom
you know personally. The reason being these
scams. You might think it is some cool dude or
funky babe
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but it is just another account trying to jump on
your account and personal details. So, to avoid
these troubles you need to ensure your friend
list has people you know personally. 8. Quiz
Scam More recently you might have come across
different posts such as know which character
resembles you or what movie resembles your life
story in your news feed. When you click on it
you and check the answer you get some random bot
generated reply which is almost common for all
and you end it with a tinge of excitement. In the
process, you end up giving your mobile number to
the quiz provider and in return you find a
certain amount charged from your mobile
account. The link/app/post is suspicious enough
to identify it as a scam. So, all you gotta do is
not fall for it.
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How to prevent Do not click on suspicious ads
that appear in your timeline. Also, suggest your
friends who do that to avoid doing it. 9. Hidden
URL Scam Because of Twitters limited word
count, many people use Tiny URL to shorten the
length of the links they wish to post. However,
scamsters use this to land you on a website that
gets a malware downloaded on your device. Simply
visit the account first that has posted the link
before you click on the link itself. Check if the
dp and cover of that account are good enough to
declare them suspicious. Check their previous
posts and decide whether theyre spamming your
timeline or not. If yes, then do not click on the
link no matter what the link promises to show
you. How to prevent. In a bid to stretch your
followers list do not simply allow anyone to
follow you or follow back people to get yourself
some followers. Keep a check on
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who follows you and remove/block people whom you
find suspicious before they end up taking over
your account. 10. Suspicious Photo Scam This is
by far the most dangerous scams prevalent across
the social media platform. In this, you get a
message from someone in your friend list saying
OMG! Is this a naked picture of you?. You tend
to panic and open the link without a second
thought. By the time you realize what is
happening, you return to the log in page and log
in again with your credentials thinking its one
of Facebooks glitches or something. However, you
dont realize youve just left your details with
some fraudster with your last login. Messages
from people who are not likely to click your
picture are obviously going to be something
wrong. Checking the profile you get the message
from before opening the link is enough to give
you a hint that something is wrong.
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How to prevent You simply need to follow the
rules of using Social Media to protect yourself
online and enjoy a safe experience. Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram, and all other social media
platforms are designed to help you share your
moments with the people you want to share it
with. So to protect yourself and enjoy the social
media experience in its true sense, include
people in your account whom you know
personally. More and more people are joining
social media everyday and not all of them have
any knowledge of how to use it properly. To help
our people enjoy the seamless benefits of
internet, we at the Indian Cyber Army try our
best to educate people about the possible threats
and spams that threatens to spoil their
experience and protect themselves from all such
stuff. We hope this little piece of text helps
you stay protected from all the major scams and
spams spoiling your mails and social media
accounts. For any further assistance, drop us a
mail on cybercell_at_ica.in  and call our cyber
crime helpline number 9868600000 we will get back
to you with the best possible help.