Chennai: With internet technology advancing at rocket pace making lives easier and simpler, it is also creating a fertile ground for fraudulent activities. The villains take any form, from malware, identity theft to phishing. E-mails, smartphones, websites, and chat rooms are being used as channels to accomplish the malicious mission. Listed below are 10 prominent online scam and ways to tackle them as compiled by ET.
1. Click Scam
While you are surfing through the net you might have seen dancing figures popping at the corner of your screen. These may contain concealed links and clicking those will make your personal identity public and may also provide access to confidential information stored on your computer.
2 Employment Fraud
There are mainly two types of employment frauds. The first one offer you jobs demanding advance payments or deposits without any proper proof. The other method is where you are offered the job of a representative for an overseas company and must find customers to deposit money in your account which will have to be remitted to the company. In doing so, you can be a culprit of identity and money theft. Be cautious while accepting such offers and do not let out your personal informations.
3. Investing Scam
Investors are fooled by providing manipulated stock informations through e-mails, social medias and chat forums resulting in bullish or bearish trend which will be utilized by the scamsters. There were also reports where people were offered guaranteed returns through e-mails and blogs looting people out of their money. It is recommended to research to the minute details before signing up with them.
4. Shopping Scam
The upsurge of online shopping and auction sites are providing a great space to carry out fraudulent actions. The main threat lies when the buyer has already the amount is already remitted and the product is yet to be received. There can be situations where the customers are charged more that what was promised or poor quality goods being delivered. It is good to deal with trustable sources and do thorough verification before proceeding for the final deal.
5. Wi-Fi Hacking
Wi-Fi hacking can be done with great ease if you are accessing a public connection such as at airport terminal or coffee shop. The hacker can gain access to your browsing history and can sneak your passwords and log in informations already saved. Using a 3G or 4G connection which is more secure will avoid the risk upto a great extend.
6. Pharming
The word ‘Pharming’ is a combination of two terms ‘phishing’ and ‘farming’, which are commonly used to refer the process by which a hacker channelizes the traffic from one site to a bogus one. This can be a severe threat and can cause heavy loss if accomplished on a banking domain. You can be secure by using secure Web connections (https) to access privacy-sensitive sites.
7. Phishing
This scam uses trustable sources like e-mails send out from institutions, social medias or payment sites to extract potentially valuable informations such as passwords, credit card details and personal informations. The e-mails may also contain links to infected sites. You can keep away from getting cheated by not giving away any of your personal information and by cross checking with the company to ensure genuineness.
8. International Dialing
Be cautious if you are prompted to download a viewer to see any content, as there are many fraud wares that cut you off from the internet connection and use the port for international calls resulting in heavy bills. It is good to keep away from sites that compel to download programs to view contents and also protect your computer with anti-malwares.
9. Fake Phone Apps
Watch over before you download apps on your Android or Apple Phone, as the app stores have become a proving ground for fake app makers. It is advisable to check the user reviews and make a thorough study on the app before you download it. Another safe way to go about is to check the most downloaded apps or one’s that come with the editor’s tag.
10. Infected Sites
Infected sites are those websites fed with malicious softwares that hack through your personal information and use them for fraudulent activities. There can be a whole lot of such sites springing up during the festive season when people purchase gifts online making hackers build upon the popular search tag. Another popular means is by adding advertisements and images with viruses to the sites that get heavy traffic.
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