Last year a scammer sent me a ‘second offer’ for a laptop I didn’t win on eBay. His price was much cheaper than the winning bid on eBay. I fell for the scam thinking it was an offer from a genuine Ebayer giving me a second offer. I lost around $200 in the scam. Since then, I’ve gotten smarter about Internet scams. So here are some smart tips on how to beat similar scams.
1. If a scammer sent you a second chance offer directly to your email address on an item you didn’t win on eBay:
What to do: Don’t accept any offers outside of eBay. Please ensure that all your communications are made via eBay’s ‘Contact Seller’ form. That way, eBay keeps track of your communications with the seller.
2. An online seller provides you with a foreign phone number to call if you have any questions:
What to do: The foreign number is a red flag. Some scammers hope you don’t call the number so they don’t incur long distance charges. Therefore, adopt a policy of “If I can’t get in touch with you, I won’t do business with you”. Try to limit online transactions to your country of residence, unless you have international business experience.
3. Seller requests payment via Western Union money transfer or money order.
What to Do: Do not make Credit Card, Western Union or Money Order payments to foreign sellers. PayPal is a better and safer option, at least for now. Anyone who does business on the Internet knows that once a scammer in a foreign country receives your Western Union money transfer or money order, he has absolutely no way of getting the money back from it. Unfortunately, some of the scammers in some foreign countries work closely with local bank staff in those countries. Do not expect any help from either the foreign bank or the local officials there. All a scammer needs to receive a Western Union money transfer is the code and an ID.
4. The Seller returns a UPS Cash on Delivery (COD) form containing instructions, where you will need to fill in a Western Union Money Transfer Number (MTN) and shipping information. Typically, the form will prompt you to complete and submit the form and it will be sent directly to the UPS database and not to the seller. You can also explain that a UPS staff member will review the form and retain the Western Union code. UPS personnel will first inspect the seller’s item and receive it on the seller’s behalf for shipping, and finally provide the Western Union code to the seller to receive their payment. The form will normally look like an official UPS online form with logos, colors, trademarks. Everything will look genuine.
What to do: According to UPS, they hardly ever do cash on delivery on international shipments. Therefore, this type of online UPS form is bogus and does not originate from UPS. If you receive a similar form by email, please do the following.
Check the web address:
Look for underscores, hyphens, extra letters, or numbers added to the web address to mimic an official website. For example, ‘http://www.ups.com’ is definitely not the same as ‘http://www.ups1.com’. Also'[http://www.westernunion.com]’ is not the same as ‘http://www.westernunionn.com’ (note the extra ‘n’ added to ‘union’). If you are suspicious of the web address, call the toll-free number listed on the official website that the scammer is trying to impersonate to confirm if the forwarded web address belongs to them.
Find out where the form is submitted:
Each web-based form you fill out sends the information to a database or email address. You can check where the information is sent as follows:
• Right click on the form
• Click on ‘View source code’ (the HTML code will appear, don’t be intimidated)
• If you’re a techie, look at the form header to see where the form is sent. If the form is sent to one of the free email clients like hotmail, yahoo, etc, treat it as suspicious. A reputable business cannot use free email addresses to receive customer orders and personal information.
If the email address belongs to a private company, say ‘[email protected]’
• Take out the ‘yoyo@’ and replace it with ‘www’.
• Type the web address, eg ‘http://www.blabla.com’ in the address bar, and go to the website.
• Write down the IP address of the website.
• Go to http://www.dnsstuff.com and type in the web or IP address. Dnsstuff.com is a free service that will give you detailed information about where a website is hosted.
• If the seller claims to be from, say, Canada and the site is hosted, say, in South Africa, you have reason to investigate further.
The biggest misconception is that all internet fraud originates from Nigeria. This misinformation has primed many people’s minds to treat only Nigerian online transactions as suspicious. The reality is that Internet scammers are everywhere, in every country. It is an easy way to earn money fast, which is why it attracts a lot of people from various countries and backgrounds.
The guys who scammed my money were based in one of the breakaway republics of the USSR. When I blocked my phone number and called them, one of them picked up the phone by mistake and greeted me with a clear Soviet accent, then hung up the phone when I spoke. He was definitely not African.
