Email Scams and Auction Fraud

 

Introduction

Email scam is the intentional betrayal made to harm another person or for personal interests through email. Email scams mostly target individuals who are naïve and too trusting. They come in the form of someone sending a message pretending to be someone they are not or from a certain company. Mostly the intention of email scam is to take advantage of an individual by tricking them. Auction fraud is the scam brought about by misleading information of a product advertised for sale via the internet.

According to Rijnetu (2019), email and website scams include phishing email scams. These are scams established from communication through emails or social networks whereby the culprits will send an email trying to mislead people to provide important or sensitive data to them. The source of these emails looks like it is from an official source, for example, a legitimate organization. Normally they convince a person to click on a link to access a certain website that looks legitimate and looks like the real website but is actually controlled by them.

Anti-Working Phishing Groups (2019) educate users who fall for phishers by creating a webpage that notifies them that they have fallen for phishing. The phishing education landing page program diverts consumers who click on phishing sites to materials that explain to them ways in which they can avoid being victims in the future. So as to shut down a phishing site, any person who has power over a phishing page has to ascertain if the company being phished has approved to have the phishing site by using URLs. If the company has accepted the use of diverting when a customer gets to the URL, they are diverted to the webpage. The Anti-phishing working groups have developed a separate website for the company managers whose servers have been used in phishing attacks know how to initialize diverts to the webpage. Instead of serving an error page, all brand owners are encouraged to approve the process.

The Federal Trade Commission explains the different ways a consumer can protect himself from phishing. These include protecting your computer by security software that should update automatically and being aware of phishing scams such as clicking links that pop up in emails. This includes links asking for payments, personal information among others. Protecting your accounts by using two or more certifications to log in to your account. Consumers should back up their data, for example, copy their computer files to an external hard drive.

According to the Cyber helpline, to protect internet auction fraud, consumers should use good common sense and be smart before making a purchase. Checking out different auction sites to know their policies and rules is important. Prices should be compared because sometimes crazy discounts are offered and turn out to be a scam. It is important for a consumer to review the seller’s feedback. Safe payment methods should be insisted on when making payments. Safe shipping methods and insurance should be considered by a consumer. Records of transactions should be kept and this includes taking pictures of items to act as proof of their condition on arrival. For victims of fraud, crimes should be reported for investigation. A consumer can contact the payment platform to get their money back. They can contact the bank to know if the money can be recovered.

USA.Gov. (2019)helps to explain an example of a phishing case whereby an online banking customer is asked to follow a link to update his banking details and the link leads him to a program that records his details and sends it to a third party. When the third party gets all the details, they are able to transfer funds from the customer’s account successfully. For auction fraud, a customer purchases items from an individual that has been advertised online. After bidding is over the payment is discussed by the buyer and the seller and the money is sent to the seller. In the end, the customer never receives the item purchased meaning that the technology used was successful. The technology used for phishing is a software that is created and appears as a link that saves personal details. For auction frauds, the page that the item was advertised was not real and after the payments were made it could not be traced. Technologies used were software related and used the internet.

According to The Federal Trade, protecting the computer by using security software could have been used not to allow updating links in the email by not allowing protection over security threats. Being cautious and aware of the phishing scam links and not sending money or personal information before verifying the legitimacy of a page.

Conclusion

Phishing and auction fraud measures help a person not to fall victim to the scammers. They enable a person to be cautious with phishing links and secure their accounts and computers. The measures make a person aware of the internet purchase of items which should be done with a lot of caution. They give information on the correct steps to follow if one is making a purchase online.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

Anti-phishing work groups (2019). Phishing activity Trends Report: http://www.antiphishing.org

Federal Trade Commission. (2020) How to recognize and avoid phishing scams. https:// www.consumer .ftc.gov

The cyber helpline. Dealing with online auction site fraud. https://www.thecyberhelpline.com

USA Gov. (2019). Online Safety. https://www.usa.gov