by Craig Burr

Created on: November 16, 2010

Internet scams are literally everywhere these days and most probably your junk email file is full of email scams. The one thing that they all have in common is that they all want to steal your money. This article is intended to teach everybody about different scams you may encounter and how to avoid them.

♦ Phishing Scams

A phishing scam is sent as an email in which the scam artists will try to acquire your credit card details and bank information among other things. Sometimes you can automatically tell if the email is real or not, however the more sophisticated scam artists can make the fake email look just like the real thing. They even use pictures that are taken directly from the website they are trying to get your information for. The scam artists will often include an official looking link in the email to make it seem even more legitimate, but instead of leading you to the site, it actually leads to a phony scam site.

• How To Avoid

Firstly, companies would never ask you for your password or other personal information. The banks etc, already have this information so would not need it again. Phishing scams will also have somewhere a line that says "If you don't reply in 48 hours your account will be closed". The reason for this line is that some people get nervous or scared and reply without thinking it through. This is the main line as to whether someone will fall victim or not. 

Check the name that the email is addressing you as. Is it your name or is it the most commonly used "Customer". Why would a company call you a customer when they know who you are? They just wouldn't. Scam artists send out thousands of the same email out a day which is why they will normally just address people as customer.

The link in which they urgently need you to follow can look just like the real thing. However, when you click on the link, it takes you to a phony website that looks just the same. The thing is, when you follow the link, if you look in to the address bar, the link will be totally different. This is called masking an URL. There is no way they can get around this as you can't have two domain names the same.

♦ Nigerian Email Scam

In the Nigerian email scam or "419" as it is more commonly known. The sender will state that they have a huge sum of money, normally in to the millions of dollars, in the hopes that you will send money to help transfer the money out of Nigeria. For doing such a good dead they will promise to pay you a couple of million

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