Scams are instances that everyone experiences consistently, whether it is an email or someone using a situation against you. In today’s post, we will discuss what scams are, an experience that I faced with a scam, and ways to identify scams.
Scams are a fraudulent scheme used to swindle or defraud someone, to cheat them out of their money or personal information, often utilizing a hoax, and for profit.
I have received multiple forms of people attempting to scam me throughout the years. One that I have noticed is prevalent is a text message that states that you have an unpaid toll fee and that if it does not get paid immediately, there will be penalties or additional fees. Fortunately, I did not fall for this scam, however, someone who is unaware of ways to identify scams might become a victim to this situation. The ways that this scam was identifiable to me was that it was through text message and that I have not driven anywhere that would result in me having to pay a fee. Organizations such as the toll businesses would not communicate through text message.
There are multiple ways to identify scams.
- Requests personal and/or financial information.
- Generic greetings such as “Dear Sir or Madam”.
- Presents an unrealistic offer.
- Urgent or upsetting statements demanding your immediate reaction.
- Requests for payment for a purchase that you did not make or for you to send money for the purpose of receiving money.
- Sender’s email address – incorrect domain names or nonsensical email addresses.
- Not knowing the sender of the email or the source posting a story.
- Google search for validity.
- Contact legitimate business to ensure validity.
- Use common sense.
When you do encounter a scam, be sure to not select the link and delete the messages.
I have also received the unpaid toll fee scam as well, it’s interesting to see how many people encounter this particular scam.
Thank you for commenting! A lot of people in the scamming industry use the same types of hoaxes to scam people because it works. There are people out there that might encounter this and find it to be true. Another type of scam that I receive pretty frequently are emails from the Chase bank about something being wrong with my bank account and they would need a bunch of information to fix it. I don’t bank with Chase, but if I were it could definitely be something that I could potentially fall for.
I never realized that a lot of scams have a generic greeting, it is not something that I had put together until I noticed your list. I will use these ways to identify scams in the future.
Thank you for your comment! There are a lot of easy ways to identify scams. I also didn’t realize that a common sign of a scam was the generic greeting because a lot of the ones that I have received greet me by my name. This might be a sign of scams evolving to not be as easy to identify.
This was an informational post. I felt like it was well organized.
Thank you for commenting! My intention was to make my post easy to read and absorb. I find that a lot of blogs or articles can throw out a lot of information which could impact our understanding of the topic. I’m glad that my blog was easy to process. I hope that you find it helped with understanding the dangers of scams and the multiple ways that you can identify them!
Thank you as an older member of the community, I always try to believe that people contacting me are honest. I’ve encountered situations like this and have been taken advantage of. I’ve lost money and have been too embarrassed to report it. With this insight, it will prevent future occurrences.
Thank you for your comment! I am so sorry that you have found yourself in this situation before. I hope that with the information that I was able to provide to you would help you in future situations.