Twenty Percent Americans Victims Of Financial Scams.

Interesting Life: Twenty Percent Americans Victims Of Financial Scams.

This blog article on Interesting Life: Trend Watch reveals the extend by which scammers have been successfully phishing bank account numbers from their fake lottery win spam.

If you were to win an international prize in a lottery, I think they would let you know by snail mail or telephone call as well as possibly by email (though I think that unlikely). To reduce temptation to follow-up more "official" or "credible" scams - put it this way, how many lottery tickets do buy before you tend to win a major prize?

For most of us all the lottery tickets that we buy are not winners. It is the nature of the game. Now how many multi million dollar prize emails have you received?

Put another way - if someone is offering you "free money" on the internet and they are not addressing you specifically (so it is an email to many) and is from a hotmail or yahoo address - I am 100% certain it is a scam. You can not be one of many winners. You can not be known and most important - there is nothing to hook up your trust with, you can open a hotmail account today without verified address details and cancel it tomorrow.

The problem with scams on the internet is that the people who are conducting them are criminals out to get your money. They are tremendously good at manipulating you because that is how they survive. The way to stop this is to make the method ineffective.

Instead of relying on law enforcement who can not act until a criminal act has occurred, use gmail as a post office and report all phishing attempts.

It is like when the UN places sanctions on an unruly member. Do not do trade with criminals.

The erosion of trust for real business and honest people wanting to make the internet work for their club, organisation or life - is a great shame.

Gullibility is a dirty word. Let undercover cops be the only customers of phishing attempts!