How To Avoid Internet Money Scams

The internet is a big, scary place, especially if you don’t know how things work. One of the pitfalls to the internet is how fast scams can progress and develop, such as internet money scams for example.

In this article, we’ll talk about how you can avoid internet money scams and safeguard your hard-earned money!

Stay away from suspicious websites
Not all websites on the internet are safe. Some just exist to scam you out of your money, while others were created in order to infect as many PCs as possible with viruses and malware. That’s why it’s important to only browse secure sites and to stay away from websites that are sketchy or suspicious.

One way to know if a website is secure or not is to check if it has security encryption. These days, all legitimate websites have the so-called SSL, which stands for Secure Sockets Layer. This prevents hackers from potentially getting your usernames and passwords for nefarious purposes. Websites with SSL are preceded with https instead of the normal http.

Don’t respond to unknown messages
Many stories of financial ruin start with one random message from an unknown stranger on the Internet. You might be interested in making new friends or finally finding the love of your life, but be warned: scammers know that too. In fact, in 2018 alone, there were over 21,000 cases of just internet romance scams alone, resulting in a median loss of $2,600 per individual. In a romance scam, scammers can get victims to send money to them by pretending to get into an online relationship with the victim, usually with the use of a fake profile and a fake identity.

If anyone messages you saying they’re interested in friendship or even a relationship, it’s best to just ignore it and move on.

Learn about the common signs
There are actually many common signs of Internet money scams, you just have to be vigilant enough to catch it.

A common tactic used by scammers to filter their victims is to include misspellings and grammatical errors in what looks like an official letter otherwise. You might have experienced this before: you open up your email and see a message from your bank. However, they spelled ‘customer’ and ‘included’ wrong, along with some other strange errors. That’s a huge sign that it’s most likely a scam. Scammers know that people who willingly ignore these mistakes or don’t even realize that there are mistakes in the first place are more gullible and easy to scam for money.

Try to familiarize yourself with all the common signs of an internet money scam and you’ll certainly get better at avoiding them in the future!