There are many internet scams and scammers that want your money, here is a few of the ways they use. Internet Lottery Scams
Normally
you've got to be in it to win it as the saying goes, luckily with internet lottery scams you don't even have to be in it because you
really haven't won it, generally you will recieve an email similar to
this one, this works on the principle of you paying them a fee to forward
your winnings to you, they get their fee, and you get a lighter bank balance, and no, you really can't win a lottery that you haven't gone in for.
Cheap Cell Phone or Mobile Phone Sales
This scam is the most common on the internet and is generally run from Nigeria, if you see a long list of cell phones at bargain prices, quite often offering 3 for the price of 2 the odds are it's a scam, generally the easiest way to check is google the contact email, you will see the same spam all over the internet, now google the contact email with the word
scam and more than likely you will find more results telling you about the scammer, you can view a sample here and a small listing of some of these scammers
here.
Dead Persons Money Transfer
This is just advance fee fraud, the email will be from a free mail account, ie yahoo or hotmail, they will be a
lawyer or
banker depending on what the mood of the day is, sums of many millions of dollars will be mentioned which you will get a good percentage of if you give them your bank details so they can transfer it to you, eventually to ensure the transaction you will need to forward several thousand pounds to get your imaginary millions, they will end up with several thousand pounds of your money and that will be the end of their contact with you.
A few advance fee fraud emails
here
Also known as 419 scam or fraud and has been going since the days of Telex.
Pishing Scams
Pishing scams are the most well orgainised, basically they will send out thousands of emails that look like they are from a certain bank asking you to confirm your account details or stating your account has been frozen until you confirm your details, in the email will be the link you need to click on to confirm your details, the page you go to will be a copy from the bank, the only difference is that it is not your bank and if you type your details in it is logged by the pisher, they now own your account.
You can view a screen shot of a pishing site
here, only difference between this and the real site visually is the url.
Internet Oil Scam
This scam never really took off, not many people interested in buying different oils by the 1,000 liter with some scammers claiming over 100 million barrels in stock like this
one.
A Tug at the Heart Strings
These emails are always good for a laugh, again advance fee fraud with offers of millions of dollars, generally most of their family has been killed, they are on there last legs with some incurable cancer or whatever, and they want to send the money to you, sounds to good to be true don't it, anyway as things progress if you email them the crunch comes when you will need to advance them some money so they can send you the millions, if you send them the money unsurprisingly you will never hear from them again and wont get the promised millions.
Those Crafty Russians
This scam only run for a while, basically it was a begging letter using pictures of pretty Russian women stolen from the net, they would ask you to send them wood burning stoves to heat their homes during the winter months, as most people are not going to send a 70 to 150 kilo stove to them I assume they would have gone for cash.
