Common traits of scammers and victims and preventive measures

Every scammer has its unique knack of trapping their victims. Yet there are some basic factors which are common in all the scammers. One needs to be very cautious in noticing those and acting accordingly.

Most common traits of a scammer:

• They will contact you unexpectedly claiming from a company or a person you have never heard of, especially from the U.S, U.K, Canada and Western Europe.
• The only contact details they provide is their email address, phone number and post-office box address.
• They are from non-educational background which makes their English a laughable matter.
• Incomplete and rambling sentences with bad grammar, misspellings and wrong references are used by poorly trained and inexperienced scammers.
• They will repeatedly ask many personal questions.
• They will mostly try to gain your sympathy by cooking up sad stories, like say, a widower raising a kid alone, a heart-broken lover recovering from love failure, etc.
• You will be asked to exchange email ids in few messages to avoid getting caught from the security of dating sites.
• Scammers on dating sites will try to trick you by saying that they have fallen in love with you.
• Gets too desperate for a relationship, send love letters and marriage proposals very often.
• They will plead you to assist them by sending funds for an operation or other administration stuffs or for their coaching classes.
• For verification purpose, they even forge official documents and send a copy to your email address.
• The fraudster will force you to make a quick decision based on a build up situation to transfer money to their account.

Speaking of their victims, there is no particular age group they usually target on. Cheaters are increasingly making attempts to lure young people – from adolescents to college students. Reason being, they do not take necessary precautions to protect themselves while using a computer or smart phone. Elderly people become victims due to ignorance to their ways of tricking them into handing over personal and financial information.

Here are some of the most common traits of a victim:

• People, who lack self-control, self-confidence and are easily persuaded by any third person fall for such scams.
• People, who do not indulge themselves in carrying out any background checks, ask questions or verify with BBB before entering into a contract or handling over your money.
• People, who do not follow strong password protection methods for their various accounts and documents, are targeted by the fraudsters.
• In many instances, people who are most susceptible by threatening phone calls, fake lotteries from unknown sources, fake sweepstakes and investment scams are hunted by the cheaters.
• Many get excited by fake advertisement pop-ups and instantly click on the link or even in some situations download a corrupted file in the link. They can even acquire your personal information just by making you open their mails and sign up for trial offers.

Steps to be taken to protect yourself from getting duped:

•  On receiving any mails or phone calls from uninvited contacts, always consider the possibility that the approach may be a scam. Be alert to the concept of scam and its methods.
• Incorporate the habit of setting different passwords for various accounts that contain sensitive information. This will help you to keep your information secure.
• Avoid too-good-to-be-true category popup windows and suspicious mails from unknown sources.
• The biggest mistake one does while entering into any deal is to overlook the terms and conditions section of the contract. Never sign up for a contract without having an in-depth knowledge about the terms and conditions of the contract.
• Never send your credit card details or account information to people whom you don’t know. They may try to convince you by being polite and generous. But do not send any money unless you are confirmed that he can be trusted.
• Try to get into the details of the reasons they are giving to get money from you. If it is for an operation, get to know about the hospital where they will be operated, the doctor, etc.
• Browse the web for further details about the person who you are dealing with.
• Avoid chatting offline and use the services of the website where you first met that person.
• Be realistic and do not believe on offers or deals straight away; tell the person you are not interested or that you want to seek expert’s advice before making a decision.
• Be careful when you shop online especially when using virtual currencies like bitcoins.

In case of suspicion, get help from your country’s online crime agencies or report to us by submitting the scammer’s profile.