Last year we wrote a post titled 4 Scams Looking To Take Your Money. At that time, there were some specific types of scams going around that we wanted to alert people to.
This time around, we thought we’d indicate some ways that you might be able to figure out whether something is a scam or not.
Thousands of people fall for scams every year. Many of them get away relatively unscathed, but some people have been scammed for hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you really get scammed, even a lawyer might not be able to get you out of trouble. That’s because sometimes these people are elusive and hard to find. Also, sometimes it’s the person’s fault for not reading a contract before signing it.
We’re going to help you out. These things should seem like common sense but, sometimes, they’re not.
1. If you get a check in the mail and it’s not from anyone you know, it’s not a real check. Many times it’s an advertisement for something; just rip it up and don’t look back because they’re trying to trick you.
2. If you get an offer in the mail for a drastically large loan or line of credit and it’s not your bank, rip it up and immediately throw it away. No one ever gets that high loan and, if you check the fine print, you’ll see the interest rates can be pretty high. It’s not worth your time to even look at them.
3. We’re mentioning this one because, even though it’s the oldest type of scam on the internet, people are still falling for it.
If you get email from someone who doesn’t mention you by name and tells you that a relative has left you money but doesn’t tell you who the relative is, it’s a scam. If you receive email telling you that you’ve won a lottery, it’s a scam. Actually, any email you get from someone you don’t know is a scam; just ignore it.
4. While we’re at it you need to be wary of email you get from entities you know. There are a lot of emails sent out from banks and sometimes it looks like your bank is sending you something. Almost no banks are ever going to offer you potential loans or credit cards via email, though it can happen here and there.
A way to find out if it’s a scam or not is to copy the link the site gives you and paste it into your browser without having it go to the site. The reason you do this is to see if the initial link is actually going to your website or to a different site. For instance, if you do online banking at Chase, the link might begin http://www.chase.com. If it’s a scam email from Chase it’ll begin with http://www.somethingelse.com/chase; they’ll leave “chase” in there because many people won’t pick up on it but now you know.
These are just a few more things to help you avoid being cheated out of your money. We hope they’re helpful.
