(Reprint from Email Scambuster Monthly Report)
You can Google to verify scams. This works with phone numbers that are in questionable emails, but you can also Google certain phrases as well to check for scams.
Most people are aware of the “Nigerian Prince” scam. This is when you receive a long letter from a supposed Nigerian prince who is hiding from his government and just trying to get his fortune out of his country and needs your help. He will pay you handsomely for just using your account to transfer his money into. If you receive this letter or any other potential scam letter you can copy the first few sentences and drop them into Google search. When you do this, you will usually find many similar versions that others have posted about the scam. It is a quick and easy way to verify a scam.
As I mentioned before, this can verify if it is a scam but if you don’t find any information don’t assume it isn’t a scam. It might just be too new to be searchable yet. This is just another tool to spot scams.
Years ago, I was watching a talk show that was about Romeo scams. This is where a lonely senior, male or female is having an online relationship with a hot young single from another country. They connect romantically by writing love letters and even having long loving conversations and eventually asking for money and usually lots of it.
In one of these cases, they took one of the love letters and ran that through Google and it came up with multiple versions and talked about all of the scams it was used in. They were actually able to get the victim to believe it was a scam due to all of the sites that had the same letter word for word. Scammers don’t invent something new if they can steal a scam from someone else.
Some of you know that I write another newsletter every month in addition to this one. It is called Email Scambuster Monthly Report. The purpose of this newsletter is to highlight current scams and educate those that are most vulnerable to scams.
I charge an annual fee of $30.00 for this newsletter because it has been proven that if you give someone information for free, they are less likely to read it and see the value of it. The information in these newsletters is too important for people to ignore.
This article is from that newsletter. I hope you see the value in it and if you know of someone who would benefit from this on a monthly basis, please click the link below and sign them up for it.
Want to get my computer services updates and reminders directly into your email inbox? Sign up for my FREE Newsletter!