Online Scams: How to Spot Them & Not Be Fooled

Who would not want extra money from the comfort of his or her home? We all without exception want to add some extra money to our budget, to meet our needs, considering that life has become very expensive and sometimes makes us look for an extra job online. There is nothing wrong with that, but be very careful because the internet is an ocean, there are thousands, millions of websites, and anyone can create one to take advantage of you.

Remote Jobs: How to Know If You Are Being Scammed

These full-time or part-time job offers, require the engagement of ‘stakeholders’ in various forms which put you on the list of cheaters because, in the end, you have not earned anything. Some of the duties they will ask you to do are: filling out various questionnaires with which action you enter the list to earn something valuable, and clicking on ads where you win some bonuses, you will be selling a product with those clicks. Job providers will ask you to ask your friends to participate in this selling so they can profit like you.

Entering your private data into ’employment forms’, opening empty bank accounts, and giving data to ‘workplace providers’ where they use your account to launder money, use your name and address for sending mail and/or packages from one address to others.

If the offer they make seems too good to be true and the provider is unknown, then leave it because it is fraudulent.

Scam Online

Online scammers will try different ways to gain your trust. Some of those ways are:

1. They ask for your phone number and politely write you every day, asking about your personal life, and trying to be very friendly.
2. They promise a good percentage after completing daily tasks, such as giving likes and shares and sending that ad to some people.
3. Initially, they pay little, and that money ‘allegedly’ is sent to personal accounts or binaries. Making you believe that this work is truly rewarding.
4. They are ready at any moment to help you complete the daily tasks assigned by them, telling you to send a screenshot after each step you take.

How to Spot Scammers

Some of the ways you should look and find out if you are being scammed:

• Job providers by transferring some money to your account and gaining your trust, make you invest more money, and then when you try to withdraw them they block the account and you can’t access the website or their phone number.
• Check their website online and see if their site is fraudulent. Many people have been fooled by these websites, and they must have left some online reviews. If they have not done a review, do it yourself so that other people do not fall prey to online scams.
• The website you are on is full of dodgy spelling and bad grammar. Scammers don’t necessarily have a good education, or maybe they come from a different country, so don’t have the language skills. Check if they have good writing skills and excellent grammar.
• The website doesn’t have a secure link. When using web pages, you need to make sure the site has a secure link. The easiest way to do this is to check if there’s a padlock symbol in the browser. Does the link start with ‘https://’? The ‘s’ stands for secure, and you should stay away from any site that doesn’t have it.

Before you decide to go to these websites and provide them with your personal information such as email address, home address, and bank details, be very careful and research that website because after they have obtained your data they might install some viruses on your computer or smartphone you can very easily fall prey to fraud.

It’s always wise to have an anti-virus installed on your computer, you can find a lot of them for free and be protected from those criminals, as well as clean your computer from any viruses you might already have.

Photo: TierneyMJ/Shutterstock

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