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Internet Scams Overview

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Fifteen years ago, I was sitting in my living room and my family got a call from a young man from our bank. He said that there was a problem with our bank account and that to fix the problem he needed some information from us…just to check and make sure that we were the secure owners of our account. My mother always had a saying that we mocked her for that always sounded something like “I saw this the other day on TV.” Finally that paid off. My mother knew that something didn’t feel right. She hung up the phone and called her bank back, and found out that there was nothing wrong with our account. Somehow he already knew our name, phone number, and the last 4 digits of our checking account. But what he didn’t have was her social and the rest of the banking information (full account number and routing number).

The other day it seemed like the same thing all over again. But it came through my email. My bank contacted me asking me to go to a secure site and put my personal information in. I went to the site and it looked perfect. But just like my mother I knew something was wrong. I checked at my bank’s site and found out nothing was wrong with my account. Internet scams come in all sorts of ways: A new job with unlimited earning potential, an email about the terrible environment of a person in a foreign country, or simply someone making sure your finances are protected. All of these Internet scams have moved from the written mail, to the phone, and now into your browsing and email boxes. They are no different. But there are a lot of other questions that need to be answered to understand the Internet scam.

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