I’m going to ask everyone reading this to do something for me today at the bottom of this post. One of the first posts I read in my Google Reader today was from Christine’s blog. thirtysomething had a nasty scam experience.
Honestly, it makes me feel so useless. Here I sit, a friend of Christine’s, a scambaiter, someone who has tried here on my blog to educate people about scams, and just one degree of separation later here is a friend of Christine’s *almost* being scammed. I say almost because she did not lose any money that I know of – but worse still she quit a real job to take a fake one.
Educating people about scams online is one of the most difficult things I have ever done in my life, because every time I think the word is getting out proof comes back to me as a surprise that it is not.
I have the knowledge to stop people from being scammed but it still isn’t enough. I can’t make the word go far enough. I can’t seem to get other people to write about the scams and link back to information I have here on the site about them.
The elderly, the stay at home Mom’s, the disabled, the depressed, the lonely, the vulnerable – these are the people who get scammed the most.
Experiences like the one thirtysomething had are why I still bait scammers. This is why I volunteer at victim support websites. This is why Sephy and I have spent the last 5 days furiously working to get a new scam warning website online.
I hear about terrible things happening to scam victims every single day. It could have been a lot worse. Just recently I spoke with an elderly lady who lost her entire life savings when a fraudulent check bounced. Scam victims are often arrested for check fraud. That is why I try to get the word out there on the internet so that people are not scammed.
What You Can Do Now –
Let the readers of your blog know about the Scam-O-Matic – a web form which can look at an email and tell you if the email looks like a known scam. Is this email a scam? Ask the Scam-O-Matic
Report Your Scammer Emails Online
I heartily encourage anyone receiving scam emails to report them via the Scam-O-Matic. The scam-o-matic can be found here – The scam-o-matic – all scammer email addresses and emails put into the scam-o-matic are added to a blacklist which can save other people from being scammed. Many scammer email addresses reported via these means are baited by scambaiters.
Reporting Scam Emails is the number one way you can hurt scammers.
You can also report scams to the blacklist in other ways, take a look here for options.
Other ways YOU can help!
- Mention today’s blog post on YOUR blog so all the readers of your blog can be educated on this important topic. Feel free to link to this post.
- Link to these articles I have written about scams –
- Internet Safety & Scams – What You Need To Know.
- Snoskred made 5 MILLION DOLLARS online this year!
- Snoskred on Fake Check Scams and Scambaiting
- Stumble this blog post and the above articles with Stumbleupon, if you are a member.
- Email a link to today’s blog post and the above articles to your friends and family.
- Ask me via my contact form to guest post on your blog on the topic of scams to help educate your readers.
- If you know anyone who has any questions about these scams I am only an email away. However there are some great websites on the internet that try to help as well –
- Fraudwatchers
- Scam Victims United
- Fraud Aid
- Now you know about this scam – there are so many others out there. Always ask if you’re not sure. The Scamwarners forum “Is this a Scam” is a good place to post a question you might have.
Steal This Post
Steal This
If you want a text copy of this blog post all ready to go in html format that you can simply copy and paste into your blog you can find it by clicking right here Steal This Post. I don’t normally encourage “content theft” but this is for a good cause. Please Steal This Post. Encourage your readers who may not know me from a bar of soap to do the same. Don’t make me beg. ;) Help stop internet scams today.
Further Reading And Viewing –
About the 419 Scam
Scam Victims United
It must be so hard for you to find that people are still being sucked in to scams after all the information that you are putting out there. Just keep on trying is probably all you can do and hope enough people read and pass on the information to those they know who might be vulnerable.
I clicked on the link and read about thirtysomething’s trouble. It seems to have been quite a sophisticated scam, working through a legitimate jobsite the way they did. I can see how people would think that genuine jobs are on offer. I’m concerned now that Australian jobsites (careerone.com.au etc.) might have risks like this. How would we know? I don’t search for jobs online, so feel safe, but I’m concerned still for others.
River – They are present on all job sites, including seek.com.au and careerone.com.au
The thing to keep in mind is there is no legal job which means you take payments into your bank account and then send the money on to someone else. It is money laundering, and it is illegal. Nobody knows where that money might have come from – often it is from other scam victims, stolen or fake checks, stolen credit cards and various other illegal places.
Many job sites do carry warnings and I suppose that is one way to get the message across but I think they have to be more vigilant – checking each job before it gets posted. I mean, they get PAID to put these jobs up and often the scammers will be paying them with stolen credit cards – so they lose out too. It is in their best interests to check out a job thoroughly before putting it online.
Cheers,
Snoskred
Good information and very useful. I haven’t “stolen your post” but I will put something together with a few links shortly. Stumbled and bookmarked too :-) which I hope helps spread the knowledge.
Cool photoshop stuff in your headers!
Excellent post. Scammers know no limits when it comes to their tricks to draw one in. I’ve Tried That is a decent blog relating to work-at-home scams and some other random stuff. Perhaps you can add it to your list of anti-scam sites.
I’ll be posting on this later when I get home from work.
Maurice – Thanks! I really appreciate you doing that
Damien – That comment doesn’t make a lot of sense in the context of what was posted. I’m wondering if something is slightly off here? If I didn’t know of you and your blog, I would say this was a paid comment and it would be in the spam bin. Just so you know. It might be better to say something more relevant in future.
Kirsten – Thanks, looking forward to reading it and again I really appreciate you doing that. ;)
i’m linking you right now, love.
I posted my scam post. You can find it here.
Christine – Thanks! ;)
Kirsten – Reading it now. ;)
Cheers,
Snoskred
Thanks for making it easy to steal this important post.I did and I linked it too.I think a site to check email scams is absolutely vital – why doesn’t the government do or fund something like this with our taxes.
Though in a very different league it it like those forwarded emails that you don’t know are fact or ficton … I check them before passing any on and then I send them back to the person who emailed me if they fiction. I got a few of the same ‘missing’ guy last week from different contacts in my address book. FAKE!
Oooh. I need to come back to this – I see I still have a lot of catching up to do on my blog visits. But this looks important and I don’t have time right now but I’ll be back for this. Thanks for the great stuff Snoskred – you are like our little guardian angel from scammers!
I’m not totally computer savy. I want to know where I can post the name of a internet scammer which can be located by simply typing in his ID so that others are not ripped-0ff. Thanks, Bob