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The term 'Internet Fraud' refers to any type of scheme designed to defraud others of their money that is perpetrated by an on-line service — this could be via chat rooms, e-mail, message boards or web sites. Unfortunately the internet is an excellent tool for fraudsters as it allows prospective targets to be readily and easily contacted. It is als overy easy with onoly a rudimentary knowlege to create a fraudulent or 'spoof' website that masquerades as a legitimate site.
Geographically, though some internet fraud schemes originate in the US and Western Europe a very significant proportion come from Africa, particularly Nigeria, and increasingly the Côte d'Ivoire and and sometimes from Ghana and Egypt. Some originate in Eastern Europe, Southwest Asia and China. Many fraudulent orders also seem to originate in Belgium, Amsterdam in the Netherlands and also Norway and Malmö in Sweden.
The kinds of fraud perpetrated (also known colloquially as 'scams' are many and varied and this page contains links that take you to varous pages that describe, analyze and demonstrate the main types of fraud in considerable details.
Welcome to the new home page of the Celtnet Internet Fraud and Scams information site. This page acts as a portal, enabling you to easily find and access information on the histories and evolution of various internet and e-mail based frauds and scams so that you can protect yourself against these fraudsters.
With the internet becoming more and more a place to do business and to purchase products and with cross-border trading so easy it was almost inevitable that the fraudsters and scamsters would move in to this environment as well.
As the internet is effectively an anonymous environment, and you cannot see the person on the other side it lends itself very readily to confidence tricks. Most of these come via email in an attempt to either attain personal details for identity theft or to scan money out of people for goods and services that do not exist. Many are obvious, if you know what to look for... and even if you don't. The most prevalent of these being the 'fake lottery win' scam. Where you are told you have wone the electronic ballot of some lottery or other. But, when you investigate you have to pay the scammers to 'get you money released'. Of course, if you are not contacted by name and if you did not enter then you did not win. No lottery organization or big company have these kind of anonymous lotteries. After all, they are in business to make money. If you did not buy a ticket then you did not win anything.
Others can be more dangerous. One doing the rounds at the moment is an email purporting to be from Google asking you to log in to your AdWords account to verify your payment details. Of course, the email does not come from google (they use any email they can get hold of and don't know your name) and it's a phishing scam. They're trying to get hold of bank account details.
The actual type of scams perpetrated are many and varied, but they all tend to be variations on a theme. Here I have brought together as many of the different classes of scams as possible so that they can be analyzed in detial and their histories given.
I also have many 'scam traps' in operation. Some of these are email adresses that do nothing but tempt phishing and other scams. There are also places on this site where businesses and others can post their site details. Whilst some are genuine most are scamsters using automated submission systems. I get so many of these each day that I did not really know what to do with them. So I'm now posting them in the scams forums section of this website. So you can see the various scam emails doing the rounds and I can give a brief analysis of each one. You are, of course, welcome to comment in the forums and add your own scam emails and stories.
To protect you from scam emails here are a few tips. You will find many more in the pages dealing with the individual scam types:
I am not trying to scare anyone here, just trying to make you more cautious. The vast majority of people dealing on the internet are honest and trustworthy. Indeed, this is one reason that scams work. If most people were dishonest then everyone would be mistrustful of everything they saw and heard on the internet and scams would not work. In fact, the internet is an information medium and you come to sites such as this one (I hope) to find information that will be useful to you. We need to gain your trust to be able to function and you need to trust the information you recieve so, despite being anonymous in nature, the internet, as a whole, is a place where trust is nurtured and developed. Only in that kind of environment can con-artists and scamsters function.
Below are links to the main fraud types perpetrated today, with some example emails and tips on how to check those emails out for fraud.
Links to main fraud types:
Tools to help prevent Fraud:
Not found what you're looking for? Search the web:
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As an essentially anonymous medium email is an ideal method of contacting a large number of people. It's also become the communications medium of choice for many individuals. Because of this its becoming a more and more attractive medium for fraudsters and scamsters. However, a few simple steps can protect you from the vast majority of email scams and these are listed in this article.
With the New Year the number of spam and scam emails is increasing once again. But, the scamsters are getting cleverer as well. Below is a new phishing scam purporting to be from the UK bank, Abbey National which should be brought to everyone's attention.
Spam or unsolicited emails are a modern nuisance but it's surprising how many people still fall for the various cons in these emails. But fraudsters are becoming cleverer and the scam emails may now be directed at you personally or may purport to be forwarded from a friend. Here I will briefly take you through the top ten fraud email strategies so that you can recognize the scams and protect yourself.
Spam is the bane of anyone whose businesses involve the internet. If you publish your email on your website then it will be harvested and used by spammers. Learn how to protect your email and fool the spammers' email harvesters.
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