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I put an ad on Craigslist to sell a refrigerator that I no longer need. Within a few minutes I’m happy to report Micheal responded to buy it!

SCAMMER: Hi am Micheal I like to ask if this item is till available for sale and what the present condition it.

ME: Still for sale, someone is interested tho, its like new, 5 months. 

SCAMMER: Thanks for the  information Joshua I am interested in buying and closing this deal before anybody else  the easiest mode of payment for me is by sending you a cashier c

If you are thinking of jumping onto the Bitcoin bandwagon, or any type of cryptocurrency, you have to make sure that you are watching out for scams. There are a ton of them out there, including the following:

Fake Bitcoin Exchanges

You have to use a Bitcoin exchange if you want to buy or sell Bitcoins, but not all of them are legitimate. Instead, many of them are created for the sole purpose of taking people’s money. Only use well-known exchanges.

Ponzi Schemes

Bitcoins are not exempt from Ponzi sch

IRS

• The e-mail (or phone call) says you owe money; if you don’t pay it immediately, you’ll be put in jail or fined.The scammer may know the last four digits of the victim’s Social Security number.
• Caller ID will be spoofed to look like the call is from the IRS.
• The e-mail will include an IRS logo and other nuances to make it look official.
• The scammer may also have an accomplice call the victim pretending to be a police officer.
• The victim is scared into sending the “owed” money—which goes to the thi

Many so-called psychics are frauds. But so are some auto mechanics, lenders and roofers. There’s fraud in just about all lines of work.

What we do know is this: There’s not enough evidence to refute paranormal phenomena. Nor enough to prove it beyond a doubt.

And we also know this: There exist scams involving hot and cold readings.

I could give a scam reading to a flamboyant, colorfully-dressed woman (whom I’ve known for only a minute) with big hair, lots of costume jewelry and a supersonic laugh.

I

LinkedIn is a free service that allows professional people to network with each other. Often, a LinkedIn member will receive an e-mail from another LinkedIn member “inviting” them to join their network. Sometimes, the inviter is someone the recipient doesn’t know, but the recipient will link up anyways. And that’s the problem.

A report at www.secureworks.com says that Dell SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit™ (CTU) researchers discovered 25 phony LinkedIn profiles.

With this particular phony network (

Catfishing is when someone creates a phony online account—and not necessarily to scam someone for financial gain. An article on vice.com tells all about a person who’s been catfishing for eight years.

She started in middle school by creating “Joey” on MySpace. She then commented, as “Joey,” on her real MySpace page to make herself appear that some cool kid named Joey thought she was pretty.

She got older and didn’t have friends. Don’t blame her for this. Her mother was an addict and father behind

It sounds almost like science fiction, even in this cyber age: A thief hacks into your computer and encrypts your files, meaning, scrambles the information so you can’t make sense of any of it. He demands you pay him a big fat payment to “unlock” the encryption or to give you the “key,” which is contained on the thief’s remote server.

You are being held ransom. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center has sent out a warning to both the common Internet user and businesspeople about this ransomwar

Scamerama is here to stay! Scams are as old as time, and evolve as inventions and technology evolve. Top scams, according to a report on FraudAvengers.com, are as follows:

1. Scammer “accidentally” overpays you for an item you sold online; you cash the crook’s phony check and wire back the difference. You’re out cold.
2. You order something online and it’s not delivered or version arrives that’s nothing like in the advertisement.
3. You prequalify for a credit line or loan that seems too good to be true. It

There will always be the person who lives on the Equator to whom you can sell an electric heater. As they say, there is a sucker born every minute.

This is why cyber criminals will always have a field day, like the crook who posed as a tax man who got an elderly couple to send $100,000 to an offshore bank account after he tricked them.

This was a fear-based scam. The other two categories are compassion and self-interest. And just because a person can’t be frightened doesn’t mean that their heart s

Criminals use six basic principles to influence and steal. In the first post we discussed:

• Reciprocation: Do something nice for a person and they will feel obligated to return the favor.
• Social Proof: This is the “It’s okay if everyone else does it” approach.
• Commitment and Consistency: Get someone to verbally or in writing commit to something, and this will increase the chances they’ll follow through.

Robert Cialdini is a psychologist who studied influence for nearly 30 years, condensing his findin

Don’t assume you’ll never be targeted by phone scammers just because you don’t have a cell phone; they continue to feast on landline users, especially those over 50.

“This is the IRS…”

• Drill this into your head: The IRS never calls to collect back taxes. NEVER.
• A common ploy is to threaten that the listener will go to prison if they don’t pay up immediately.
• If you really do owe taxes, the IRS will contact you alright—but via snail mail, not a phone call, text or e-mail.
• Scam calls may also sound pro

I really enjoy reading blogs. And since you are here, reading my blog post, I’m guessing you do too. Blogs are a great way of gaining information and learning about different perspectives on a wide variety of topics. Unfortunately, spammers have tainted this medium with splogs.

The word splog is a combination of the words spam and blog (from my perspective, it could easily be called blam as well). And that’s exactly what it is, a blog full of spam. Splogs are blogs that usually have plagiarized c