How to avoid being scammed

John Scheerhout

September 01, 2006

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THE golden rule to avoid becoming an internet scam victim is never give your bank details to anyone you don't trust.

Banks will never ask you to confirm all your personal details.

Scam e-mails often include generic welcomes like "Dear customer" because they don't know your name.

Don't be conned by messages offering the chance of easy money and be wary of e-mails from abroad as they are harder to verify.

Never go to a website from a link in an e-mail - always type in the address yourself.

Safe website addresses begin with the prefix https, where the 's' stands for secure. Only ever enter personal data on these safe websites

Scam e-mails often try to sound urgent to get people to respond - don't.

HAVE any more tips to avoid being scammed? Have your say!

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David Benyon, Bude, Cornwall (04/09/2006 at 00:53)

I was scammed on eBay by a 17 year old (a very precocious and extremely dishonest one who is allegedly banned from the parental home for dishonesty). This cheat used his brothers ID and excellent eBay rating to gull me into buying a so called Alpha-Drive (a stern drive unit for a boat). Alphas came out in 1986 and are substantial units that can cope with hundreds of horsepower. What I got for my ¿¿500 was a 1966 Renault-Mercruiser model 80 which is little more than scrap metal, virtually worthless. Allegedly the trickster had been scammed himself so he just copied the fraudulent advert. As the sale became an off-eBay transaction eBay are not interested and as he is still a minor I don't think he can be sued. One often hears of "grooming" on the Internet but you don't expect it to be done the other way round. Maybe it will be possible to sue once he becomes 18, but at present I'm ¿¿500 out of pocket.

Dusty, Manchester (17/10/2006 at 16:23)

I have to say that the wife will purchase things off E-Bay and has got some pretty good deals but I personally wouldn't trust anyone on there, (that's not to say they are all dishonest) but I don't know anyone on there. I also think the feed back system is open to con artists and could even encourage it, this is especially true when the person selling you the goods says give me good feedback and I'll give you good feed back. What does that say for the honesty of people selling things on there and of the accuracy of there selling record.

OL, Manchester (20/10/2006 at 11:04)

Ebay's great for the odd small purchase here and there. But wouldn't bother with anything large in value. I think when dealing with larger items there needs to be telephone contact and cash payments on pick-up.
I wouldn't send payment via paypal blindly. As for email scams, if its too good to be true - it usually is.

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