There’s every scam under the sun. There are Nigerian scams, ponzi scams, sweepstakes scams, HYIP scams, credit card scams, and many more. Today I just want to touch on work at home scams because these seem to have run rampant over the past several months. Let the truth be repeated again, making money online just isn’t as easy as what many of these make money sites or blogs are trying to make you think. It’s just clear all this baloney is simply preying on the increasing number of desperate or greedy people out there.

One of their tactics now is to game search engine listings by releasing press releases which naturally rank high and are seen by many of the news site’s readers. Maybe you’ve come across these press releases before. Just because it is a news site, it doesn’t mean it should be trusted. Unfortunately, these news sites have become accomplices to these scam artists by releasing their “press releases” on “how to make big money online.” These “press releases” then link back to scam sites, which are often slick websites with fake “proof” of earnings and testimonials.

These websites will usually have this veneer of “how I make $XXXX working only a few hours a day.” And it will definitely be priced within the means of most people – Scammers know they have to price their goods low. The problem is most hustlers know their methods will not make people much money (if any at all), but they make it sound so easy, so achievable; when basically they are just selling people air!

• One key tip: You should always read the fine print. There are sites that might make untruthful claims of being affiliated with some big company like Google but are not, and sell some useless program for a few dollars. They might charge you an initial small fee at the start, but have it in their fine print to charge your credit card a much bigger sum later on. The only time most people realize they’ve been scammed is when their credit card gets billed a big sum the following month.

OK, don’t get me wrong. I’m just pointing out the scams and the obvious. Does anyone realize the MASSIVE amount of time, effort, and money required to achieve anything remotely resembling a decent result when it comes to making money online – the legit way? How many are actually able to pull that off? Scammer types know all about that, but they also know it is easier to sell spades and shovels rather than any actual gold. While there is more than one way to make money online, NONE of them are easy, nor is any profit guaranteed at all, so just bear that in mind before you part with any of your hard earned cash. If it was only as easy as paying $5 or $10, or $97 for some “secrets” and then sitting back and watching the cash roll in, everyone would be rich by now!

Typically, phishers use cleverly planted subdomains to generate a temporary URL which would get temporarily get through the phishing databases maintained by the major browsers. Before they’re found out, they move on. Would this make the anti phishing filters redundant?

Here’s an example of a phishing email, the kind which I get rather frequently.

Clicking the links generates a phishing site warning from Firefox.

Actually, most phishing sites would not get past the anti phishing databases of the major browsers. All the major Web browsers (IE, Firefox, Opera, etc) have constantly updated anti phishing databases, which have one major weakness – Any phisher can easily compare his phishing site against the database, and throw up another when the current one “expires.”

Phishers target anything and everything. Recently, there was a Gmail phishing scam that tried to steal your Gmail password. What will they think of next?

The best defense is still user education – on how to detect phishing sites or emails, and not any amount of anti phishing software or any kind of “constantly updated database.” Phishing emails and sites usually contain traits like:

• Urgent nature of the messages, requiring prompt action to resolve.
• Penalties for not complying, which increases urgency.
• Hyperlinks that do not link to the actual website being referred to. Mousing over a URL in a phishing email will reveal that the URL is not the actual URL, usually a temporary subdomain.
• Doesn’t address you by name – not a foolproof way to detect a phishing email though.
• Phishing sites usually don’t have SSL or unverifiable security certificates – There is usually no “https://” whereas all secure sites have it.

You can’t win the war against phishing, let alone spam. For every foil, there is an exploit. For email phishing, just remember the golden rule and you’ll be pretty safe – “Never give out any password when asked in an email.”

If you have never heard of a gift card, you might know of gift certificates. Gift certificates are the same as gift cards, except they need not be in the physical form of a card and are not automated for the accounting and checkout processes, whereas gift cards have that feature due to having a magnetic strip. The old version of gift cards were simply called scrip. They all basically serve as some kind of store-specific currency, and can be used to purchase their goods.

Now, the gift cards themselves do not have any value until they’re sold at the issuing store. The approved amount is then entered into a computer database and linked to the specific ID number of the card. Due to the costly nature to regulate and monitor the vast numbers of gift cards, scammers have managed to exploit certain loopholes in the system, aided by the proliferation of websites selling gift cards on the Web.

One method has been labeled e-fencing: Fraudsters who have obtained stolen credit cards use their credit cards to purchase gift cards online, and then immediately try to sell them off real cheap at some website. Some unsuspecting person comes across it, thinks it’s a bargain, and buys it. So the fraudster managed to “redeem” his credit card for some gift cards and (still) make a profit by selling his gift cards; even though the stolen credit card gets canceled later on. Basically, the credit card has been “converted” into gift cards and lives on because the transaction is rarely traced and the gift card canceled!

So, do avoid buying really cheap gift cards, and only buy them from official store websites only. Another red flag is how new the card is; the newer it is (and going for cheap), the greater the chances of it being illegally purchased. So don’t get scammed or be a party to it!