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Avoid Dating and romance scams
1. Do not send/wire money to strangers.
2. Do not engage in any type of business transactions with strangers.
3. Do not provide money, banking, credit card, gifts or personal details to strangers.
4. Do not agree to transfer money for someone else. This may constitute money laundering which is a criminal offense.
5. Do not email personal or financial information. Email is not a secure method of transmitting personal information.
6. Do not accept presents from strangers.
7. Do not cash a cheque from strangers through your bank account because they are “out of the country” and unable to cash it themselves.
8. Do not wire back money to people that are making payments to you. Do not accept checks for more than the amount they owe you.
There’s no such thing as love at first sight on the Internet.
1. Avoid strangers that claim to “love you” in a relatively short period of time.
2. Avoid strangers that express strong emotions and feelings (love, friendship, sympathy, etc) for you in a relatively short period of time.
Don’t let scammers take you to their comfort zone:
1. Avoid strangers that suggest moving the conversation away from the website preferring email, instant messaging and/or phone instead.
2. Be wary of strangers that give you their email, Skype or Yahoo ID in the first 1-2 messages.
Fishing:
1. Avoid sharing too much personal information on social network and dating sites.
2. Avoid e-mail which appears to originate from a financial institution, government agency, or other well-known/reputable entity.
3. Avoid messages that ask you to “verify” or “re-submit” personal or confidential information by clicking on a link.
4. Avoid links that appears to point to sites of financial institution, government agency or other well-known/reputable entity.
5. Avoid providing social Security numbers, account numbers, passwords, mother maiden name, place of birth.
They might not be who they claim to be:
1. Ignore strangers without pictures and webcams.
2. Ignore strangers whose profile picture or photograph looks different to their description or seems like it’s from a magazine.
3. Ignore strangers that claims to be from the U.S. and is traveling or working overseas.
4. Ignore strangers that contact you claiming to be someone’s doctor, police or lawyer.
5. Ignore threats that your account will be closed if you do not respond to an email message.
6. Ignore strangers that call you on the phone and offer to help solve your computer problems or sell you a software license.
7. Be wary of strangers that claim some sort of connection to USA, Canada, Australia, Europe.
8. Be wary of strangers that claim to be U.S. Military Personnel stationed oversea and in need of financial assistance.
9. Avoid strangers whose email are poorly written, vague or contains specific information taken directly from news articles, repeats itself, you are addressed by the wrong name, or the email is not personally addressed at all. Use of poor grammar indicative of a non-native English speaker.
10. Avoid strangers that claims to be a native-born U.S. citizen, but has a thick accent.
11. Avoid foreign specialists from USA, Canada, Australia, Europe, etc. That claims to be working in Nigeria or Ghana.
Money & Finances:
1. Avoid strangers that tell you about large amount of money they need to transfer out of their country or that they want to share with you.
2. Avoid strangers that ask for your banking details or money to cover administrative fees or taxes to free up funds/money.
3. Avoid strangers that claim to be in the depths of despair due to financial hardship or an ill family member.
4. Avoid strangers that claim to have fallen ill or been involved in a serious accident.
5. Avoid strangers that ask you for money to pay medical bills.
6. Avoid any arrangement with a stranger that asks for up-front payment via money order, wire transfer or international funds transfer.
7. Avoid strangers that tell you an elaborate story and ask for money, gifts or your bank account/credit card details.
8. Avoid strangers that continue to ask you for money.
9. Avoid strangers whose emails and calls become more desperate, persistent or direct if you don’t send money straightaway.
10. Avoid strangers that try to enter into any kind of business transactions with you.
11. Avoid strangers that claim one of his family member is in desperate need of surgery and request monetary assistance.
12. Avoid emails saying you have won a lottery you never entered.
13. Never accept payment for more than the purchase price of the item
Keep your PC clean:
1. Do not open attachments or download files from emails, regardless of who sent them.
2. Always read your email as plain text.
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