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A scam letter is a document, distributed electronically or otherwise, to a recipient misrepresenting the truth with the aim of gaining an advantage in a fraudulent manner. Origin [ edit ] Currently it is unclear how far back the origin of scam letters date.
Not many years ago, scammers would direct a victim to go to the bank to withdraw money to put on a gift card. Or trusting relatives would take them to the bank to take advantage of them.
Get-rich-quick schemes. Get-rich-quick schemes are extremely varied; these include fake franchises, real estate "sure things", get-rich-quick books, wealth-building seminars, self-help gurus, sure-fire inventions, useless products, chain letters, fortune tellers, quack doctors, miracle pharmaceuticals, foreign exchange fraud, Nigerian money scams, fraudulent treasure hunts, and charms and ...
Email scams posing as the Internal Revenue Service were also used to steal sensitive data from U.S. taxpayers. Social networking sites are a prime target of phishing, since the personal details in such sites can be used in identity theft ; [70] In 2007, 3.6 million adults lost US$3.2 billion due to phishing attacks. [71]
Scam #3: Charitable contribution and investment scams. Watch out for this scam, where scammers research personal information about you; lifting info gleaned from our social media pages.
• Fake email addresses - Malicious actors sometimes send from email addresses made to look like an official email address but in fact is missing a letter(s), misspelled, replaces a letter with a lookalike number (e.g. “O” and “0”), or originates from free email services that would not be used for official communications.
Some examples: They say they've noticed suspicious activity or log-in attempts on your account. They claim there’s a problem with your account or your payment information. They say you need to ...
If you're ever concerned about the legitimacy of these emails, just check to see if there's a green "AOL Certified Mail" icon beside the sender name. When you open the email, you'll also see the Certified Mail banner above the message details. When you get a message that seems to be from AOL, but it doesn't have those 2 indicators, and it isn't ...