Still Falling for Internet Scams?....

With the recent airing of Dr. Phil's scam show, and
tonight's (11/10) Episode of Close to Home,
I decided to do a post about how to recognize a scam, and how to help
yourself over the internet. I keep telling myself, when I hear about people falling for scams again, gosh I wish people had my knack for spotting liars and scams,
and had my knack for knowing how to protect themselves.
Tonight's episode of 'Close to Home' was very loosely based
on a case in Nashville, TN , on which a Minister's Wife killed her husband
because she did not want him to know that she had lost money
from a very common internet scam....THE NIGERIAN or THE AFRICAN SCAM

IF ANYONE FROM AFRICA IS STATING THEY WANT TO SHARE MILLIONS OF DOLLARS WITH YOU IT'S A ..(say it with me).. SCAM!!
NEVER GIVE YOUR BANK ACCOUNT INFORMATION TO ANYONE.
NEVER SHARE YOUR CREDIT CARD INFORMATION,
Unless you know you are dealing with reputubale merchandisers,
such as ordering from a sears catalog for example.

NEVER BELEIVE EMAILS THAT WANT YOUR PERSONAL
PASSWORD INFORMATION TO ANYTHING OR WANT YOUR
BANK INFORMATION.

If you question it, that is your instinct telling you to staw away.
DELETE the email.
Also there is a step to make sure you are dealing with legitimate secure sites
on the web instead of ending up at a phishing one designed to steal
your information. anytime you type a page that requests your account
name and password for anything, look at the site and see if it only has http
on it, , slip in an s after the HTTP to change it to HTTPS ,
sites that you have to sign into like paypal, ebay, and yahoo,
automatically have the https beginning when signing in, this lets you know
are on a secure site. If you are signing into any of these sites,
and it does not start with https on the sign-in page, you are not secure
and are most likely on a phishing site.
The https thing won't work with every site, it is mainly for any site you sign into
with your account information, it wouldnt work
on http://fileplanet.com if you tried to go to https:/fileplanet.com
it works on the address on where you sign in to sites only.

When I get email on my aol account, saying that your bank account is in jeopardy,
or your credit card from so and so bank needs updating, I can check if it is real or not,
well one, if I know i don't have an account with that bank I know it is a scam,
also in the emails there is a thing on the header of the email
that says - sent from the internet (Details) and i can click on the details link
and it usually tells me where the email was sent from, basically
I look at the return paths, and the recieved from and all that good stuff
if I see a fishy email address in there I KNOW is not associated with ebay or paypal ,
any other thing, I KNOW that the email is a scam and I alert the proper people.

SO PLEASE BE SAFE PEOPLE, before giving out your password info for any
double check the site, before giving your financial information from an EMAIL,
double check and ask the company that the mail claims to be from if the mail is legitimate,
they usually have an address where you can forward the mail to,
to let you know if it came from them or not.

ALSO, DO NOT BUY GIFT CARDS FROM AUCTION SITES, BUY THEM DIRECTLY
FROM THE COMPANY YOU WANT THE GIFT CARD FOR.

GET EDUCATED!
AND IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS, LET ME KNOW.

It is a sad realization of our world today, but we honest caring people
must be vigilant in everything, otherwise you will find yourself
victim to a con, a scammer, or WORSE.

Be safe my friends.