Beware of internet scams!

Recently, there has been a shocking increase in internet and email scams. Be very wary of these practices. There are many terrible stories of people who have been taken in by these crooks and lost money in doing so.

Email scams are particularly popular amongst the crooks. You may have heard of the emails asking for money to be sent to another country. While extremely shocking, most people know these are not genuine emails. However, some scams are extremely clever and much harder to spot. Thousands of people have been receiving emails and calls from companies claiming to be attached to the Inland Revenue. News of this scam has been reported widely on the news, and in the papers.

Phishing scams are an attempt to get your personal details from you in order to more easily commit identify fraud. The problem here is that if successful, the culprits can cause a great deal of damage to your credit rating and online reputation.

Be extremely careful with your personal details, especially bank account details, your full name, and date of birth. If a company asks for these details then be cautious and report the email. If it is genuine the company will contact you to confirm it. Banks and other financial institutes never ask for your personal details via email and they will never ask for your passwords.

Do not fall for any company claiming to offer you something that seems almost too good to be true. Take some time to look into it. Search the company name online and check to see if it is a scam. Although scams are appearing on the internet every day, fortunately they are also identified as scams just as quickly, so a quick search will reveal them for you.

Stay safe when you are online, only deal with reputable companies, and never share your information online.