Internet Scams And Their Victims

[Moolkye 0]

I was on MSNBC.com and read this article

 

YONKERS, N.Y. - The State of the Net survey by Consumer Reports projects that American consumers lost more than $8 billion over the last two years to viruses, spyware and various schemes.

 

Additionally, it shows consumers face a 1-in-3 chance of becoming a cybervictim -- about the same as last year.

 

According to the survey, consumers lost $630 million over the past two years to e-mail scams.

 

They also spent at least $7.8 billion for computer repairs, parts, and replacement over the past two years to correct problems caused by viruses and spyware.

 

Consumer Reports says it conducted the survey among a nationally representative sample of more than 2,000 households with Internet access.

What I find funny, is that fact that people are complaining, because they are stupid. They were dumb enough to believe whatever that scammer was offering.

There is an old saying that says, "If it's too good to be true, it probably isn't true!"

 

Why is it, when most people see a scam like these, that they think it is going to be any different than any other scam on the web. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH!!!!

Edited August 8, 2006 by Moolkye (see edit history)

[AlternativeNick 0]

yeah, i hafta agree, people are pretty stupid when it comes to scams and such on the computer :S my grandma got scammed for a christmas ham ( no joke ) because she though a homeless family really needed it. for real, what homeless family has a computer?anyways, im pretty sure u should put that in [-quote-] tags (without the -'s)

[mynitr 0]

I thing a little common sense can do away with these.Most of the scams contain "secret money transfer", "stock prizes", "help a sick child"..etc..etc..Just do a web-search on certain words from the mail and you can easily bust the scam.

[nations 0]

Yeah, my dad almost fell for the nigerian scam, the one where you send your info to some guy who supposedly picked you to get his $15 million dollar fortune but, my dad caught it as a scam when it asked for his credit card information.Then he got another one (same type, but modified requirements) for $15 million from some other country and you had to send bank information (wiring info).It looked semi-legit until it asked for his mothers maiden name (so the b******s could withdraw money from his bank account) he deleted the email and told me about it.One thing with spammers/scammers is this, the turnover rate is horrible (The lowest rate I have read about is 1 in 5 million or as high as 1 in 20 million). So thats why it seems like everyone gets the email around your area at the same time.Here is how most spammers get your email address:They buy lists off other spammers (who obtain the addresses from companies with loose or no security/privacy policy), get your address by guessing (using computer programs to generate email addresses and other programs to verify if the address is "live"), or by viruses/spyware and other means.Some good policies for staying off Spammer lists:Do NOT post your email address 'out in the open' (ie in forums etc.) Spammers collect addresses using Spiders like Search engines crawl your page to rank it.Do NOT give your email address to any of those "You have won a free item" popups you see on the net.DO read privacy and security practices for websites your going to submit your email address to.DO scan your computer on a weekly basis for AdWare and Viruses (I recommend Ad-Aware for getting rid of AdWare and Kaspersky Anti-virus for your Antivirus).If I think up more I will post them.Peace,nations