Money Scams - How Doltish Can One Be?

photo credit: d70focus

What Are Money Scams?

Money scams are basically ways in wich a person will try to make money off you or steal your personal information. This can be done in many ways, like e-mail scams, selling a product that doesn’t do what it advertises, spoofing (pretending to be a well-known company and trying to get information), get rich quick schemes.

I’m sure you’ve all heard of e-mail money scams, especially the Nigerian ones. The “scammer” sends you an e-mail telling a story about a bank draft that’s waiting for you to cash it, an unclaimed fund, a lottery ticket that you’ve won, etc.

Whatever the story might be, the bottom line is that the scammer will try to get your personal information and perform an identity theft, and basically leave you with nothing in the bank. The story they present to you is often quite clever and well written, in an official matter, even giving a lot of contact information so you can “verify” the facts yourself.

The get rich quick schemes are very popular, and even many bloggers have started thousands of blogs about how to get rich in a very short period of time. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. The same goes for products you find on the Internet: they might look good in the picture, but once you get them (if you get them at all), it might not be what you paid for.

Scams Exposed

One person replied to a scam e-mail and acted as he was interested in the offer, the original article about it can be found HERE ,the whole conversation with the scammer exposed word for word. I really recommend that you read it, it’s not only very, very funny, but you’ll realise an amazing thing: many thousands of people  have already fallen for it, what on Earth where they thinking?

I’m sure everybody got at least one of this kind of e-mails (I know I got hundreds! I’ve even replied to some, just to see what’s going to happen). When I got my first couple of e-mails like this, I’ve replied and told the scammer what I thought about him, after which, of course, I didn’t hear from him anymore. Now I get so many , that I don’t even botter, I just “spam” them.

But if you’d like to report them, the site www.ftc.gov can help you, their e-mail address is “uce@ftc.gov”   and you can also view examples of many other money scams on their page.

As for all the other scams out there: let’s be real. How many people have you head of that got thin with a miracle pill overnight, or made a million dollars from what they learned in an e-book? Exactly. None.

Who Falls For This???

You  might be laughing, it’s so obvious, you say. An e-mail from a yahoo.com address, pretending to be a bank, a person you don’t know asking for your private information and promising you millions of dollars… Come on, you say, who can be that stupid?

Well, I think all of us have fallen victims to at least one scam throughout our lives. Think about it: how many commercials you see on TV promise stuff they can’t deliver? From that magical night cream that will erase 20 years from your face in 24 hours, to that miracle pill that makes you lose 50 pounds in a week.

We fall for it because we’re more often than not looking for quick results with minimal effort. That’s why money scams will always be around, and have plenty of “customers”. The same goes for “get rich quick” schemes and the likes.

We want to get rich quick, over night if posible, and without having to work too hard for the money, we want to lose weight over night as well, without having to diet and exercise for the rest of our lives, we want to be healthy just by taking a pill, without having to eat right and give up junk food, we want to find love on a website, and pretty much make everything easy.

That’s why you see so many sites out there that provide no value, no information, just a costly e-book that will tell you how to make a million dollars in a short time. And they are successful. There’s one such site I’ve seen over and over agin advertising on Craigslist, and on many other blogs. They don’t work, the guy behind it is getting rich by taking advantage of out uncontrollable need of cutting corners.

Conclusion

Cutting corners doesn’t work. Hard work over time works.

Making money fast is a fantasy. There’s no such thing!!! (Unless you’re doing something illegal or morally wrong).

If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is! (a big cliché, I know, but still forgotten by many).

Learning how to make money from studying and from personal trial and error experience is the only way to go. That’s what I’m trying to do here, learn together with you, not take the easy way and buy hundreds of e-books that promise me I’ll be a millionaire by tomorrow.

Have you ever had any experience with money scams? Leave me a comment and let’s talk about it!

Thank you for your patience.

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