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Sunday, 19 July 2015

INFOGRAPHIC: 7 ONLINE SCAMS AND HOW TO AVOID THEM


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7 Online Scams and How to Avoid Them
By KeriLynn Engel,
Who Is Hosting This, 16 July 2015.

As much as technology has developed in the past century, you’d think humanity would have developed along with it.

And it’s true, we’ve made a lot of progress in the past 100 years. We’re less violent, more educated, and life expectancy has shot up while infant mortality has gone down.

But one thing that hasn’t improved is our propensity to scam each other.

Though the details of their scams have changed over time, con artists have been practicing their arts throughout all of human history.

Insurance scams, for example, were prevalent in Ancient Greece. Con artists would take advantage of bottomry, a type of maritime insurance, by hiding their ships in foreign ports and claiming they had sunk in order to collect on their policies.

And while Chatroulette blackmail schemes may have only become possible with the advent of the Internet, such schemes have been going on since long before then. In the early 20th century, a similar ruse was called “The Badger Game,” where a young woman would lure a lonely married man from a bar to her hotel room, and then threaten to out him to his wife unless he paid a hefty fee.

Even the famous Nigerian scam didn’t start with the Internet. It’s been going on at least since the 19th century, when it was known as the Spanish Prisoner scam.

Developing technology hasn’t put a stop to all our scheming and scamming - in fact, it’s made it easier.

But protecting yourself can also be made easier with technology, if you know what you’re doing.

Check out the graphic below to learn about how to watch out for the most common scams that are perpetrated online, how to protect yourself - and where to report the perpetrators so they get the justice they deserve.

7-Online-Scams-And-How-To-Avoid-Them


Top image credit: Don Hankins/Flickr.

[Source: Who Is Hosting This. Edited. Top image added.]

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