When Web Scammers Hit Home

I'm probably the most web savvy person in my entire family, when I mean entire I mean ALL my brothers, sister, cousins, uncles and aunts {which is a LOT of people}. So, I'm asked for advice constantly when it comes to the web, which is nice. Many a times I've had to go through the process of talking someone out of a scam that they were clearly getting into.

I never thought a Nigerian would almost convince my brother to send a cheque over, I also never thought that I would have to talk another one out of buying a get rich quick "program"! It's a good thing they asked me for advice before they wasted their money.

This just goes to show that spammers, scammers and Nigerians are still trying to dupe a lot of people away from their hard earned cash. Granted, the ebook offers, programs etc...are usually not that expensive {mostly}, the one my brother found was for $29. But if they did sign up, they've bought themselves up for a constant barrage of "hope" filled emails and extra products which will only make them poorer and not any richer.

The main point here is that they would have gotten scammed and that can have a serious impact on their self confidence, if anything. I was happy when my brother contacted me to say that he wanted to explore online opportunities, then he pointed me to a website that sounded like it should, a scam. I won't point to it here as that's not the point of this post, the point is that WE, i.e YOU, need to educate our relatives and friends about the dangers of the internet.

There are only 1 billion or so people online today, more sign up everyday. There are 6 billion, and counting, people in the world. That means the scammers still have a lot of potential in front of them {I don't speak that in a positive tone}, you need to educate new online surfers within your family and friends circle at the very least about the basics of how to spot a scam from the real deal.

At the very least, tell them about -

• Email Inheritance Scams - This is where you can possibly make a few million by just sending all your personal information and a cheque to start the "process" of clearing the dead relatives inheritance. These guys are getting more creative with their approach everyday.
• Phishing - We all know what this is, but to most it may just seem like a cool way to say fishing on the web!! You know, like "LOL". Don't believe that a bank has lost your details and will send you an email to enter your personal info online. If you do get an email, open a new browser window and visit your banks site to see any updates, or CALL them. Do Not click on the links in the email.
• Get Rich Quick Ebooks - They seem pretty inexpensive, full of nice "testimonials", and look you get a bunch of free stuff too! Please tell your family and friends about these types of ebooks and internet marketing scams. They. Don't. Work.
• Get Paid To Survey/Get Paid To Click/Get Paid To Surf - The money you can make from doing online surveys is virtually nil and definitely not worth the effort you have to put in. My wife tried it in our early days on the net, so I can speak from experience. Similarly, getting paid $0.001 per website you view, or clickthrough, for 30 seconds is certainly not the most productive way to spend your time.
• Anything else that promises you stuff that seems to good too be true. It probably isn't.

Just to give you an idea of the kind of marketing tactics some use, I will quote a paragraph from the site my brother was exploring. It was pretty hard to convince him otherwise -

THIS IS ALL YOU NEED TO DO:

1. Choose the Companies to work with. Take their link / Data . ( More than 11,000+ Companies. Free to join. )

2. Login and access your PPC forms to fill out.

3. Enter the link / Data / Codes into the PPC forms.

4. Click the Submit Button.

5. That's it. You don't have to sit in front of your system all the time. Analyze the results once in 2-3 days and you can even find out your earnings instantly.

If you can't guess what that is for, it's for using Google Adwords!!! I never knew PPC was that simple, I'm guessing the 11,000 companies are all ClickBank products {the less I say about them the better}.

This is a screenshot from that site, click to enlarge -

Now you know why you need to educate your family and friends about what NOT to believe on the internet.

photo credit: Misserion

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