Yahoo Wants to Give me 500 Dollars!
I’m not sure what I did to deserve this but I must of done something because everyday I get a fresh batch of scam emails to contend with. When I say batch I don’t mean one a day I mean a whole batch, on average about 3 or 4 per day ranging from the 1,000,000 dollars lotto I won to the old lady that wants to will me her husbands fortunes.
Its pretty easy to spot a scam email, and for those of you that are wondering, here’s some things you should look out for. Never pay anything, if they ask for money, its a scam. Most emails will be from free email services such as yahoo, these types of emails are very unprofessional and are a clear indication of a scam. If the email asks for all sorts of personal details, don’t give them because its a scam. If the email is offering a large sum of money for no apparent reason, its a scam, don’t feel sorry for the old lady or the war veteran that’s writing it.
If you have any doubts towards the email you’re reading, do some research, a quick search in google will quickly unmask its true intentions.
I have been getting one email though that almost fooled me. It’s from ‘yahoo.com’, and it says that I won a 500 dollar reward for something or other. There’s a few reasons that made this one tempting, firstly its from yahoo so there’s no reason why the email shouldn’t come from yahoo. Also the prize is so low that it seems ridiculous that someone would try to entice people with that amount. But most convincingly when you click the URL it takes you to a genuine looking yahoo page.
Alarm Bells
Then it asks me for money. I can’t access my winnings unless I upgrade to a premium account, it only costs 8.something dollars to upgrade. Ok, I can easily do that, but hang on why are they asking me for money in the first place, don’t they know who is premium and only do the draw with them? So I decide to investigate.
Right away I start to notice a few inconsistencies. The real yahoo.com looks much better and newer than the site I’m directed to. Also they were accepting payments through e-gold, paypal, and stormpay which is very uncharacteristic of a site like yahoo. By now I was pretty suspicious, but then I check the bottom of the page and it says copyright 2005, the real yahoo says copyright 2007.
But perhaps the funniest thing and the thing that really put the last nail on the coffin for me was this headline about something to do with a Clark, an Abdul, and some explicit evidence to an affair. Upon doing a quick google search I find this article talking about the incident, and guess what? Its dated April 28, 2005.
Thank you yahoo, but I think this time, no thank you.
Simon
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Nice tips.