Life has undoubtedly been helped by technology. Various inventions offer the ultimate convenience that most people are looking for. Communicating far and wide has become possible through numerous devices and gadgets. Money making is one of the highlights offered by the internet.
The internet is an incredibly successful and useful innovation as it has helped people in countless ways. Nowadays, people can generate money through the web in several different ways. This has completely changed the lives of almost everyone. That’s why those who are living in these modern times are pretty thankful of what technology has to offer and what it can continue to offer in the future.
Making money online has become very popular in the past few years. The greatest thing about these favorable circumstances is that it does not require any kind of educational attainment from interested parties. The things which are required here are simply time and the willingness to learn.
However, you should likewise be aware that there are those dastardly persons out there who would pounce on the desperation of others. Most of them are after the money and efforts of online enthusiasts. They would not pay for any kind of service rendered to them. Thus, here is a simple guide that can help you to be more aware of these common online scams.
Inquiries from Long Distances
Oftentimes, people from different continents will anonymously contact others through emails. This is a very suspicious thing, don’t you think? What on earth could he want when he is miles away from you? People who contact you from different continents may be getting your information from a database and using an unknown number so as to be harder to track.
Requests for Your Financial Information
Most calls from scammers would be to get your personal and financial information from you. You should be wary of these because these are the instances where hackers take full advantage of the information given.
Hard to Believe Stories
Apart from these requests, some emails would contain stories which can be rather hard to believe. It may be one asking for a donation for some cause or it could be a request for a fee because you somehow won a lottery. Whichever the case may be, you should not believe these stories immediately because they are probably scammers.
These are the most common scams that you see on the internet today. You should be more careful in handling these things because one mistake could ruin your financial status as well as your reputation if somehow someone starts using your identity.
PPI scams to watch out for
With millions of people filing PPI compensation claims over mis-sold private protection insurance, there was no question that scammers would smell the money and join the bandwagon in cashing in on the gold rush. The scammers are not targeting the banks. Of course it is very easy for banks to detect and discard fake applications for PPI compensation. They are instead going for the victims, who have already been victimized by the banks and the building societies. So what are the main PPI scams that you will need to watch out for and how do they work?
The UKASH voucher PPI scam
This is one of the most popular PPI scams which is currently going around. You will receive a phone call from a supposedly genuine PPI company informing you that you have won a PPI refund that you probably did not even apply for. The company seems to know your name including the name of your lender and you will be asked to make payments for “administration charges” in order to receive your PPI refund. These payments must however be made by purchasing UKASH cash vouchers at a high street store. This kind of scam is very similar to the advance fee fraud that has hit millions of people in the last decade, which are also known by the name “Nigerian scams”. It is important to note that most PPI companies work on “no refund no fee” basis and you only pay out after you have received your refunds and the invoice from the legitimate PPI company that you used to apply for your PPI compensation.
Other advanced fee PPI scams
There are other advanced fee PPI scams which operate in a similar fashion to the UKASH PPI scams but the mode of payment is different. In these too, you will receive phone calls from a fake PPI claims company, with the caller often having a foreign accent and knows your name and lender details. The caller will inform you that they can get your PPI refund if you make certain payments via money transfer services like the Western Union or MoneyGram. You may also be asked to provide bank or credit card details before you can get your PPI refunds. Upon giving this information, the scammers will literally clean out your account. There are instances where you can be asked to purchase payment cards like Paysafecards at local high street stores and then send reference numbers to a given email address over the internet. It is important to consider all these instances as scams. If you have already issued personal information, you can make calls quickly to your credit card provider or banks and ask them to monitor your account and halt any unauthorized transactions.
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