There are plenty of spam advertisements that are trying to sell you prescription medication, home refinance deals, and emails trying to get you to sign up for online casinos - these are just plain annoying. But there are many other e-mail scams whose main purpose is to take your money - all of it if they can.
The Nigerian bank scam is one famous example of this. The sender, who says that they are related to a government official or they are a former dictator from Nigeria, tells a story in the e-mail of how millions of dollars are sitting in the bank and are inaccessible. They're willing to share the jackpot with you, if you're willing to help them. Your help, however, requires the transfer of several thousand dollars from your own bank account. While it seems that most of us would be too smart to fall for this scam, the reality is many people fall for it every year. An older Czech man who put up his life savings through this scam shot the Nigerian consul in one highly publicized example of how this scam can be devastating.
Some of the most common Internet scams offer you almost unbelievable investment schemes with paybacks that are too good to believe, and too good to be true. Usually these investment schemes claim to be without any risk but once you turn over your money it's highly unlikely you'll see any payback. One common scam targets people with bad credit. This one asks you to send money for processing fees and a security deposit and you'll get a credit card. You will get nothing in return for your money and by the time you start getting help or an investigation, the scammer is long gone.
Another common scam involves multilevel marketing schemes (commonly known as MLMs). These emails will suggest you buy huge quantities of some hot product. You're told you can resell the product for an easy and lucrative profit. You'll receive a commission on each sale you make and the sales others make who work under you. Once you've bought the merchandise, though, your distributor will disappear, and will usually not even deliver the goods.
It's important to remember that legitimate businesses don't advertise this way. Usually they will e-mail select groups, people who have previously purchased product from them or who have signed up and given their e-mail address to them. Often these e-mails will address you personally rather than in a generic mass e-mail kind of way. Any other offers should be ignored and you can simply delete the e-mails or click "junk e-mail" in your e-mail client so the server knows these are coming from a spammer.
One lesson that people need to learn is to never reply to a spammer. Even if you reply with "stop e-mailing me", that e-mail won't be read and instead you'll simply get more e-mail. Don't even click on the link that says "click here to remove your e-mail from our e-mail list" -- you won't be removed from the e-mail list and you will be added back into their database.
Finally, never give out any personal bank account information, private data, or your credit card number to anyone over the Internet you do not know. Banks, PayPal and other credible businesses will never send you an email asking for passwords or other personal information.
It's another common scam for you to get an email from a "bank" asking for your password or other personal information. You'll be told that the information is necessary to confirm your account. Don't click on these e-mails. If you wonder if they're for real, you can always call the bank directly.
Most of these scams are obvious. And you can know by looking at them that their spam or certainly not on the up and up, but if you aren't sure always look at who the sender is. If you don't recognize the name of the sender name, it's likely the e-mail is spam.
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