Little known ways to prevent internet frauds

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The Internet is no doubt a great and an informative place. But like every other thing on this earth
it has some demerits too. Internet fraud occupies the top position in the list of current internet security issues. Every year a lot of people are defrauded online. And today we will look at different ways to prevent internet frauds.

Combing new and advanced technologies with some old tricks do the work for them. In this
way, they can get personal information and money from the people. Hackers are everywhere.

The most prominent trick that scammers do is that they pretend to be the one to whom you can
trust and get their desired information from you, but there are some more!

Here is the list of ways to prevent internet fraud that this article covers:

Free trial offers
Data breaches and skimming
Unsecured internet connection
Update OS and other software
Online retailers
Email Account compromise
Investment frauds
Hitman scam
Fake software
Online job scams

Ways to prevent internet frauds

1) Free Trial Offers

The first way to prevent internet frauds is to take care of the free trials. You must keep yourself skeptical about the free trial software offers. Some companies use it to bill you.
They give you a free trial for their specific products, and then they bill you for many months
until you cancel the offer yourself.

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Note down the following things before using the free trial software:

Do read the cancellation thoroughly before signing any trial software offer.
Do check your monthly statement to so that scammers are not charging you for anything
that you don’t know.

2) Data Breaches and Skimming

The second way to prevent internet frauds is to be aware of skimming or data breaches. Data breaching is when a hacker breaks into a corporate to steal data.

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By data breaching, some sensitive information like social security number, credit card number,
address, etc. are stolen and sometimes sold to a third party too.

Thus some essential and critical information is released from a secured location and then leaked
to an untrusted environment. It promotes the unauthorized use of information too.

Skimming is a bit different from data breaching in a sense that it occurs in real time.

Skimming occurs at the point of transaction. When a handheld scanner is used to get your secret
information, and then the scammers keep it for later use.

3) Unsecured Internet Connection

The third way to prevent internet frauds is to connect to the secured Wifi connections.

Public free WiFi is not secured.
While using public wifi it becomes easier for a hacker to monitor your activities on the
network
So you should be much careful while using public wifi and try not to access any sensitive
information while using it.

4) Update OS and Other Software

Make sure you update OS and all security software on your devices to the latest version.

5) Online Retailers

Scammers also use fake website online to trick you.

They take advantage of the latest technologies and set up a fake retail store.
Then they offer luxury items on such websites at very low prices.
After you have ordered the time from that site, you keep waiting for the delivery of that
product and that items arrive never.
They also use social media website to scam the buyers.

How to Check Shopping Scam?

Some of the away that you can check to see if there is any shopping scam on the site are:

They pretend to sell products at much lower prices.
Immediate payment or payment by wire services.
No or little information about refund policy and terms and condition
Fake contact details

Protection Guidelines

To protect yourself from such scams follow the guideline below:

Check for the refund policy of that site
Check the customer reviews
Look for ‘https’ in the URL as SSL provides security for payments
Be aware of the false coupons.

6) Email Account Compromise

This scam works in a way that legitimate business email accounts are compromised through
different computer intrusion techniques, and then they transfer funds to their account in
unauthorized ways.

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7) Investment Frauds

Their primary targets are stock investors. Their goal is to steal money and the identities of
investors.

Mostly online newsletters are used to do such type of investment frauds.

In these newsletters, they offer some information related to stocks to get a fee and this
information is also not the correct one.

Online bulletin activity also serves as a hotbed for such type of scams. With such information,
they try to alter the stock values. After hindering the stocks, they sell the shares for personal
benefits.

8) Hitman Scam

Hitman extortion scam is the most frequent scam you might have seen online. In such fraud what
cybercriminals do is that they send the threatening email to the target victims to get money from
them.

Such scam works in many forms. Sometimes an email is sent to the victim of the kidnapping
news of his family member and asks a significant amount in return.

To make the email more threatening, they sometimes use your sensitive information in that email
too.

Thus it is advised not to share your any sensitive information especially on social networking
sites. You might think that you are using a safe network, but you don’t know what type of people
are around you.

9) Fake Software

One of the most common popups that we see on our computer screens is “You have been
infected download software XYZ to protect your PC.”
Well, all of them are not the real one. Many are created to resemble the actual ones that some
favorite security products use.

To get rid of such fake popup is to use an antivirus on your PC and scan your entire
system.
Also, you need to be secured while browsing online.
Sometimes malware like Trojan and keylogger get into the system. Crypto locker that
blocks and encrypts the OS is also used sometimes to get money from the victim.
Besides using your antivirus also use some specialized security products to stay safe and
secure while being online too.

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10) Online Job Scams

Well telling you the truth scammers are almost everywhere. You will witness the even while
searching for a job too.

They pretend to be recruiters and use fake job opportunities to attract people and then trick them
to get the secret information out of them.

It all starts with a phone call. Such false recruiters call themselves as recruiters from some
famous companies and then say that they have gone through your CV online and are interested in
hiring you. Thus this is how they trick you.

Get Rid of Job Scams

Thus while applying for any job whether it be online or offline do follow the guidelines below:

Research about the company and its employees thoroughly.
Get information about the person who contacted to hire you.
Ask different people about the company.
You may also take help from your any relative or a friend who used to interact with such
employees.

Other ways that hackers steal enterprise data is through tactics such as Phishing. If you aren’t familiar with fishing, you can learn more here.

Final Words

Internet fraud is penetrating at an alarming rate. But you don’t need to panic a lot as you can avoid it
by being a bit more conscious while working online.

These cybersecurity threats are spreading quite faster. Thus while working online don’t trust
anyone.

I hope these ways to prevent internet frauds are useful for you! If you know other ways, feel free to share them in the comments section below!

About the Author

Allen Jame is a blogger and a web developer. Allen aims to teach people about the internet
world. For this reason, he writes articles. You can follow Allen on Google+ and Twitter.