Every week two people in my department win $1 million dollars from this Nigerian guy. Such a generous person I must say. All he asks for is that you send him your bank account details. In fact people are now leaving because they got rich quick… Im still waiting for one to pop into my inbox.. Now seriously… there is NO nice man in Nigeria giving out his millions and for many of you who know this you’d be suprised how many people dont. A lot of my readers are aware of internet crime  but dont really know much about it so let me give a brief breakdown.

Lotteries / Sweepstakes

This internet crime occurs by making someone pay for their prize. If a promotion requests a user to pay their prize, it is an effort to gain money or an attempt to obtain credit card details. So next time you receive an email telling you you’ve won the lottery and all you need to do is input your personal details…. DONT DO IT!

Investment Opportunities

Invest in some town in the middle of yup yup! Investment opportunity or “get rich quick” schemes are a popular key way of scamming people out of large volumes of money. Schemes like these have existed prior to the online days but the online environment assists the criminals by making audiences larger and easier to reach.

Identity theft

Identity theft is the most lucrative internet crimes. By stealing an individual’s identification, a criminal can initialise a mass of other internet crimes because an identity gives a criminal the prospect of robbing a victim financially but also the possibility of posing in their name and ruining their credibility.

Credit card fraud

Credit card fraud has long existed offline but nowadays over half is conducted online. According to Avivah Litan an analyst with Gartner Inc. 1/20 transactions are fraudulent. Criminals are making hefty summed purchases using stolen credit cards and identities. In fact 26% of identity theft is credit card fraud related

Auction Fraud

According to the 2006 Internet Fraud Crime Report, 44.9% of complaints made, reported auction fraud. Auction fraud, covers an extensive selection of crimes that evolve from online auctioning; consequently making the percentage higher in this category. Some of the crimes that are recognised to be in this category are: misrepresentation (Item description is false), triangulation ( Items are bought with a stolen identity and then resold, but the payment is received by the criminal who was the go-between the two parties), fee stacking (Additional hidden charges which are added once the auction is over ), black market and counterfeit goods (Non official items are sold as originals) , multiple bidding (Bidder withdraws a higher bid at the last minute to buy the item at a lower bid they’d made previously.), and shill bidding (The seller bids to increase the value of the item). In the report non delivery(Item is never delivered. Payment is made by credit card and name and credit card number are stolen), is classified on its own and accounts for 19% or reported crimes.

Final Tip

I really think the key is to always be cautious. Dont give out your personal details to anyone. A bank will never send you an email asking for your acc number and other personal details. Always look for secure shopping carts – through the https:// url at the top of the page – normally this is http://. Look for hackersafe logos, etrust logos, McAffee logos. These usually mean that the cart is secure. So now that I have scared you enough.. Happy online shopping!