I remember the first
time I encountered spam after posting on Craigslist. I was a sophomore in
college, and had used Craigslist to advertise my tennis lessons in Bethesda
(which is right near Washington DC). I remember getting an email from a father
who lived abroad and wanted to wire me a decent amount of money for lessons for
his son, who apparently was living in Bethesda. He provided a lot of details
involving transportation for the boy, times, and pricing. At first my gut
feeling felt off on this however,
I responded immediately to the email pretty
excited about the opportunity. After a few email exchanges I had a feeling that
this sounded a little too good to be true, and started to sound fishy. The
supposed "father" started asking for a lot of personal and
confidential information over email, and would refuse to call me to talk about
lessons over the phone. In addition, I noticed a lot of typos and broken
English in later emails. I consulted the internet and family/friends to get
their thoughts and they all said it rose red flags. I then googled this email
and found that other Craigslist and classified users were experiencing this
same email. Lucky for me I halted all contact, and never lost any money or got
scammed... but it was a close call! After this experience, I thought that it
would be useful to highlight a few ways to avoid these scams or what to look
out for. I recommend checking these bullets, it could save your wallet!
·
Always go with your gut
feeling and what it makes you feel inside. If immediately the
email sounds weird, too good to be true, and/or raises a red flag, take
precaution!
·
Use a search engine like
Google, and search the actual potential scam email. You will be surprised that
sometimes people or classified ad users will warn others about the scam.
·
Just don't respond, its
not worth it. There are a lot of legitimate buyers out there, so just work with
them.
·
Keep an eye out for listings
that have many typos, missing contact information, no pictures, and unusually
low or high listing prices. Postings that use all or many of these should raise
red flags.
·
Avoid contacting listings
that are repeated many times on classified ad sites. These might not be scam
but might be spam. I noticed this on a lot of larger classified ad listing
sites. Many contain tons of spam and have no way of really controlling it.
Frustrating for people searching for quality listings/products that actually
meet their search criteria! In addition, this can be frustrated for people
listing products, but then not getting visibility because of copious amounts of
spam.
·
Try them on the phone. If you
are worried about a scammer, see if you can talk to an actual real person
before even proceeding with anything else.
·
Deal with people
locally! Check out the product/service you see listed and in person is a
way better idea than doing everything over email. By doing this in person you
can check the quality of the product, and allows for a more a more trustworthy
transaction.
·
Beware of listings that
require online transactions, wiring, or fake cashier checks.
·
Beware of listings or
emails that require financial information, social security,
credit card information, bank accounts, personal information, and or credit
card checks.
Hope these tips help! If
you ever want to report scams to the authorities you can do so by reporting
them to IC3 or the FTC online.
At http://www.therestaurantzone.com we
are a spam-free classified ads site, for the restaurant industry with listings
in equipment, property, decor and much more! We work hard to keep spam, scam,
and fraudulent activities away from our site. We have many different tools and
practices in place to reduce these adverse activities and maintain the highest
quality of listings on The Restaurant Zone!
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Matthew_W_Rodgers
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/8075407
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