and are what I consider another important set of information that can assist you in advancing your family history and genealogy research. A genuine business making a genuine offer will never pressure you to act immediately.City and business directories are available online from all over the U.S. Scammers will often put pressure on their victims and urge them to pay immediately or lose the opportunity. Never wire money to someone you do not know. Be very suspicious of demands for wire transfers or cash payments. Scammers prefer payment methods that are untraceable, such as wiring money through Western Union or other services. Never give anyone remote access to your computer unless you have contacted them and are 100% certain they are not a scammer. If there is a physical address, check it out using the Internet or Google Earth and see if it’s a real address.Ī common scam is a phone call from someone claiming to be a technician who has detected problems with your computer and would like to fix them for you free. If there is no physical address and your contacts won’t give you one, it’s a sure bet you’re being scammed. Scammers do not want their victims to know where they live. For example, if the only way you can reach the person is via a mobile phone rather than a landline, it could be a scam. Contact details can also be a sign of a scam. If you can’t find any reference anywhere to your contacts, they’re probably fictional. Google the name of the person and the company, and all the email addresses, and do a search on Google Blog Watch. Many genuine business people also have a presence on sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook. Do this for the company’s website too, if they have one.Įven if a name looks genuine check it out using the white pages online (or yellow pages for companies). Use a Whois lookup such as for the domain name (the part of the name after the sign) to find out who owns it, and see if anything about it looks suspicious. Other domain names not connected with the name of the company are also suspicious. Some genuine businesses do use free emails, but most do not. Suspect any free email address such as hotmail, aim, yahoo, gmail. Look carefully at the email address and domain name of every contact you make through the suspected scammer. They might suggest they are only trying to help you out and the fees are a small sum compared to what you will be receiving. It might not be clear what the fees are for, but the scammer will tell you they have to be paid or the money can’t be released. Scammers will want advance payments or fees to clear the funds or complete their offer. If the correspondence you receive is full of errors, be very suspicious. Their grammatical errors can give them away. Scammers may be intelligent, but they are not always well educated and don’t always have English as their first language. Never click on links or attachments in emails from people you don’t know or you risk your computer becoming infected by viruses, trojans, or other malware. If you think the email has really come from your bank, pick up the phone and confirm this with them, but banks don’t do this. A common scenario is an email supposedly from a bank asking you to click on a link to confirm your bank details and password. Scams involving identity theft also seek personal information. Many scams involve getting hold of your bank account details. Examples include money left to you from an unknown relative, being awarded a loan or grant for which you did not apply, winning a lottery you did not enter and being selected to receive a share in funds in return for using your bank account. If it seems too good to be true, it almost certainly is. Scams Red Flags and Tips to Avoid Becoming a Victim of a Scam
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