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Britt Erica Tunick is an award winning financial journalist who has spent the past 17 years writing about virtually every aspect of finance. She has mastered the art of boiling down complicated financial topics for readers to understand. |
As technology evolves, so do the tricks used by scam artists to rob you. Email purchases are now one of the most dangerous places to make purchases. Here are some ideas to keep you safe. Email Scams By Britt Erica Tunick We’ve all received emails with the subject “business proposal,” “your inheritance” or some other similar subject line promising us wealth or easy money. Of course, this wealth will be ours just as soon as we wire money to the sender, which they’ll soon return tenfold. Then there’s the line where they simply need our account information in order to get us into a no-fail business deal. While there are individuals who have fallen for these scams, most people are immediately tipped off by the misspellings almost always present in such messages, which might as well just say SCAM! Unfortunately, not all fraud is as easily detected and many of the criminals that now proliferate on the Internet have gotten incredibly sophisticated. So you need to ALWAYS be on guard. Take, for instance, buying a new puppy. Just as the Internet has created online marketplaces for everything else you can find in stores, finding breeders and purchasing puppies may now be done online. So, after a quick search for breeders selling puppies, you find a listing that looks good where the seller asks you to text them for more information. Given the fact people use their phones for everything these days and tend to check texts more frequently than emails, such requests don’t seem suspicious. You may even get a few texts asking specifics about what you are looking for and the timing you would like. This is followed by a request for your email address where you will be sent the same kinds of questions a legitimate breeder would ask. It is only when you reach the point where you need to put down a deposit that things will get suspicious. You will surely be asked to wire a portion, or all of the money to hold your new puppy. STOP! NEVER wire money to anyone you don’t know. Whether it’s a puppy, a used car or any other item TO BE purchased online, understand con artists have mastered the right questions to ask to appear legitimate. Many even go so far as to create phony shipping websites, or using the name of legitimate shipping companies to send money wiring instructions. There are, however, a few telltale signs of such cons and simple steps you can take to insure they are for real:.
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