I am the victim of scamming!

Almost everyone who browses the World Wide Web or uses email has been the victim of scamJust to make sure we are reading from the same page:

a scam is any attempt to deprive you of something by deceit
or
to persuade you to do something that is seemingly beneficial to you but which has a hidden agenda that may include victimizing or swindling you, or manipulating or conning you to do something that ultimately is only beneficial to the scammer, and a disaster to you, your friends, your family and your colleagues.

Nearly all attacks will be delivered via pop-ups with special offers or "alerts" that look like system warnings but are pop-up adverts or by unexpected emails that may include an attachment or just an enticing link to a web site  or hoaxesA hoax may or may not be a criminal act.

It may be, depending on the mind of its creator, mis-information just for fun.

It could also hide a virus or trojan or itself be a "virus" which, through clever use of social engineering, enlist your willing help to propagate it by disrtibuting out to your contacts. Chain letters, petitions (plight of women in Afghanistan), charity appeals (Red Cross will pay 3 cents towards hospital care for cancer stricken little girl for every email forwarded about her to your friends) are all forms of socially engineered hoaxes, Whether benign or not, most of thsese are circulated just to harvest email addresses  or phishingPhishing is an internet scam specifically designed to trick you into revealing credit card, passwords, social security numbers and other personal information to criminals who intend to use them for fraudulent purposes. Phishing attempts may be made via email, pop-ups or links to fake web pages that say, look like genuine PayPal or eBay pages. Most oiften phishing email seems to be addressed to you from banks. . All three forms of trickery are founded in social engineeringCick link for interesting information and examples of scoical engineering which simply translated is the art of deceiving you in order to get you to give out private information about yourself.

Scams and phishing are most prevalent in pop-ups or email. Hoaxes generally come to you by email. F-Secure has an alphabetical list of all known hoaxes but Sophos offers information about hoaxes by type.

Do you know how good you are at recognising and dealing with scam/hoaxes/fraud/phishing? Test yourself at OnGuardOnlineThis stop-think-click quiz

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A good place to start to see the scope of how scammers try to swindle or victimize you is at Fraud.orgBy no means comprehensive, this category list will give you some idea of the scope of fraudulent methods that may be used to swindle or victimize you.

Government Grants, Advance Fee Loans, Bogus Credit Card Offers, Business Opportunities, Buyers Clubs Charity Scams, Computer Equipment and Software, Credit Card Loss Protection, Credit Repair, Information/Adult Services, Investment Scams, Job Scams, Magazine Sales, Nigerian Money Offers, Online Auctions, Prizes and Sweepstakes, Pyramids and Multilevel Marketing, Scholarship Scams, Travel Fraud,Work-at-Home Scams and of course, Phishing.

Click link for in depth information and advice about each category

Even if you are the world's greatest optimist, Internet browsing and unsolicited email, especially if the email seemingly come from your loved ones, should be viewed with the strongest feelings of skepticism!Be very vigilant. See the World Wide Web as an ancient map where some undefined areas are marked "Here be Baddies". The number of baddies waiting to trap you may not be large but they definitely are absolute experts in social enginering. Most often you end up voluntarily doing what they want you to do without ever recognising the dangers! And if it happens to many many adults, guess how often children readily give away family details in Chat rooms!   "It could never happen to me!" is plain ignorant self-delusion! Check out these real phishing scams that are made to appear to have been sent from genuine banks.

Here are my tipsThis are very simple ideas that won't cost you anything and don't require hi-tech software!

Click link to go to that page on how to detect and avoid being conned by phishing email.