1. Job Hunter Scams
2. Debt Relief and Settlement Services
3. Work from Home Schemes
4. Timeshare Resellers
5. Not So “Free” Trial Offers
6. Itinerant Home Repair/Roofers
7. Lottery and Sweepstakes Scams
8. Identity Theft
9. Advance Fee Loan Scams
10. Over-Payment Scams

Now, let’s see take a look at the top ten scams of 2012.

1. Job Scams

Still topping the charts at No. 1 is the phony job scam. As if it wasn’t hard enough to crack into today’s job market, these scams will not only crush your hopes of being employed, but also steal your identity. How do they do it? In order to “start the job,” you’ll more than likely have to fill out a credit report or your “employer” will ask you to provide your banking information for direct deposit.

2. Sweepstakes and Lottery Scams

Climbing up from No. 7 to No. 2, sweepstakes and lottery scams remain prevalent in their many shapes and forms. No matter how you see it, fraudsters try to convince you that you’ve won a ton of cash. But wait — there’s more! In order to receive your winnings, you first have to send them a bit of money to cover taxes or other bogus fees.

3. Social Media/Online Dating Scams

With the growing popularity of online dating websites and social media networks, it was only a matter of time before fraudsters started using these platforms for scams. There are many types of dating scams, but it all comes down to one thing: the victim falls in love and trusts the fraudster, who then tricks the victim into sending money or even financial information. Social media scams are a bit trickier to catch, often involving links to videos that prompt you to upgrade your Flash player. When you download the file, you also download a worm that logs into your social media account and sends a similar message to your friends. The worm will also scour your computer for your personal information.

4. Home Improvement Scams

In the past two years, the number of natural disasters has significantly increased — and so has the number of itinerant home improvement scammers. Just like n tornado, they leave your house looking like more of a disaster than they found it. And just like an earthquake, they’re gone before you can blink your eyes. If a repair man comes knocking on your door, ask for a business card and do some homework to find out who they really are.

5. Check Cashing Scams

Also known as an over-payment scam — No. 10 on the BBB’s Top 10 Scams of 2011 —the check cashing scam involves one sender, one receiver, and one bad check. The sender “accidentally” mails a check to the receiver for an amount greater than what they owe. The receiver cashes the check and wires the difference back to the sender, immediately debiting the funds from the checking account. A few days later, the original check bounces, and the receiver is out whatever money they wired.

6. Phishing Scams

In 2009, phishing emails regarding the H1N1 virus were particularly widespread. In 2008, they targeted consumers expecting packages from FedEx or UPS, and tricked them into divulging personal information. What’s the top phishing email scam to look out for in 2012? This year, it comes in the form of NACHA — the National Automated Clearing House Association. The fictitious email claims one of your transactions did not process, and prompts you to click a on a link to rectify the situation. Once you click the link, you’ve downloaded malware that hunts for your personal data on your computer.

7. Identity Theft Scams

Whether it’s through phishing, vishing, smishing, security breaches, or good ol’ fashioned wallet theft, identity theft remains rampant. This year, be on the lookout for phone calls in the middle of the night — to your hotel room. That’s right. Scammers will call you up in the middle of the night while you’re sound asleep, pose as the front desk clerk, and ask for your credit card number. Their reason being their computer has crashed and your transaction won’t process. Don’t believe them. Hotel concierge more than likely won’t disturb you in the middle of the night unless it’s an emergency. It’s not hospitable.

8. Financial Scams

Rolling in at No. 2 as the Debt Relief and Settlement Services Scam in 2011, financial scams almost always leave you in more debt than when you started. We understand that times are tough. You may be in danger of having your house foreclosed on, or maybe you have too much consumer debt. Either way, do ample amounts of research before you decide to use third-party assistance for getting out of debt.

9. Sales Scams

From Ponzi and pyramid schemes to the door-to-door con man, sales scams come in a wide range of forms. Advance fee loan scams ranked in at No. 9 in 2011. This year, sales scams are taking form in penny auction websites. Although there are many legitimate penny auction merchants, some are under investigation as being an online gambling site.

10. BBB Email Scam

Just this morning I received an email from alerts@bbb.org stating one of our customers filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. The email included an ID number and prompted me to open the complaint report for more information. When I hovered over the anchor text, (“COMPLAINT REPORT”), the URL was not going to send me to BBB.org. Instant red flag sign of a phishing email.

Instabill is an online payment processor specializing in high risk merchant accounts.

image:clayton

• top online business scams 2012

In fact, people are getting so good at scamming others, that their websites look no different than any other website… on the surface.

So how do you keep your website from scaring off consumers by coming across as a scam?

Avoid pop-ups like the plague

Aside from being tremendously annoying, the very first thing a pop-up says to a consumer is that you’re desperate for their business. This makes you look exceedingly amateurish, something that will act against anyone looking to succeed in the world of online money-making.

And since the majority of spam websites include some sort of pop-up you will most likely immediately be lumped into that category and be forever fighting that stereotype. You should especially stay away from the pop-ups that ask potential customers if they’re sure they want to leave the webpage or offering them something to stay on the webpage.

Double check everything before going online

To ensure that people don’t question the validity of your website, you have to ensure that it is error-free. This means that you have double (and even triple) checked all of your content for spelling or grammar errors and that everything is properly formatted.

• Only use all caps if it is absolutely pertinent to your message, otherwise stay away from them.
• Having grammatical errors and employing all caps are two common signs that a website isn’t genuine.

Use verifiable customer reviews

Make sure to get consent from anyone you are using as a review before you post them on your website and make sure that the reviews sound authentic.

• Scam websites often employ reviews that sound too good to be true. You want to put up reviews that don’t sound exactly like the writing on your website – otherwise, people could come under the assumption that you wrote the reviews yourself and are trying to trick them into something.
• Write reviews naturally – explain both pros and cons of the product.

Don’t utilize “Free Trial Services”

Unfortunately even if you have the best of intentions, you can come across as a very unreliable source if you promise a 30-day free trial that requires customers to give all of their information and a credit card.

• A genuine business doesn’t need to trick people into paying for their goods or services by getting credit card information up front – particularly because people tend to forget that their free trial is up and they needed to cancel continuing the service and end up unhappy that they’ve been charged for something.
•  It’s better to keep your customers satisfied than to get a few extra dollars and a lot of complaints.

Provide full and valid contact information

One sign of a scam is that their contact information is nonexistent other than a random email address or a 1-800 number.

• Instead, make sure that there is a real person’s name they can ask for, a phone number that they can reach a person at and an email address that utilizes the domain name and not Gmail or Hotmail – both of those elude to unprofessionalism, whereas an email address at the website’s domain name comes across as much more reliable.
• You also want to respond quickly to any questions, comments, or concerns that your potential customers may have – if their email goes into a black hole and they never hear back from you they probably aren’t going to utilize your services or buy your product.

It’s unfortunate that there are so many websites out there that are trying to scam people out of money and thus making it more difficult for the legitimate business owners out there.

To quickly summarize:

• Don’t use pop-up windows in your site and also, don’t load wired graphics/sound in the background which annoys the visitor.
• Have original content and provide useful information to your visitors – don’t over promote the content (for example, avoid words with all caps).
• Never get credit card or other related information from the users before offering a service or product legitimately.
• When you are writing reviews, provide relevant information about the product. Add product images, review videos and don’t just force the visitor to buy. Keep it naturally flowing.
• Provide your contact information and say your visitor that you are available to support them anytime.

The online world can be a difficult one to break into, but by utilizing some verified tips and tricks you can ensure that your website is professional and reliable and not lumped into the category of websites to avoid.

Because there’s not much worse than when someone types your website into Google and the word “scam” comes up after it.

image:crashmatt

• genuine e-money web sites

Buyers Beware.

Research the product. To avoid scams when shopping on Ebay, do additional research on the product you are hoping to purchase. What is its average price range? Or if it’s a rare item, what would a reasonable cost be? This is important to know because a dishonest seller may be overcharging you or giving you something of lower quality. Does the page contain photos from the product’s website or photos that they actually took of the product? Always be aware of what you are purchasing before you place a bid.

Research the seller. Does the seller have any negative feedback? How long have they been selling online? What other products do they sell? It is important to look into the seller and their history before you make any bids. If they have several negative reviews, read them to see if there is a trend among them such as slow shipping or products not being as advertised. Also, be wary of new sellers with little to no feedback. While every new seller is not a fraudster, scammers can create new Ebay names to perpetuate new scams. The legitimate sellers have plenty of experience selling and plenty of positive reviews.

Stop Scamming !

Research other bidders. Shill bidding is a common scam on Ebay but illegal Ebay offense where the seller either bids on his own products with another username or has a friend or employee do it. This drives up the cost of the bid and innocent shoppers end up paying more as a result. If you are outbid by an amount that seems strange or too high, look into the other bidder. What is their feedback score? If they’re a new user with no history, something underhanded might be going on.

Sellers Beware.

Research your high bidders. Shill bidding can also occur with bidders who first place a low bid, and then using another name go on to place a high bid later to scare off other bidders. They then retract the high bid just before the auction ends so that their low bid will win instead. Ebay has measures in place to keep this from happening, but you should still be wary if a bidder places a bid that seems too high. Contact them with questions about their interest in the product or research their history to see if they have any negative feedback from other sellers.

Ebay is a great way to shop and make money online, so be careful to avoid scams by doing the research.

This guest post is contributed by Lauren Bailey, who regularly writes for the site best online college. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: blauren99 @gmail.com.

image: serdela

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Are you really looking for a better and trusted online business ? There are so many parameters that you could find out in the Internet from legitimate ones to Scam schemes. At any point of time, You have identify the best one by investing good amount of time in doing a research before opening up your wallet.

The most important part is to identify the legitimate business opportunity. You have to segregate the scam business from the trusted one. Failing here may lead to business failure.

The hardest situation is that most of the scam business sites looks too much professional and colorful. So in reality, visitors may fail to identify and they will end up losing the money. Are you seeing something like, make million in 3 days or 1 week with any online business ? If yes, watch out more. In reality, this is never possible and this makes no sense. So you have to take the steps careful. So don’t believe in these kind of business magics.

Usually, all the business owners are showing the income or earnings from their business to the maximum level. I mean, they are advertising with the maximum possibility of earnings. But in reality, a new joiner or an average worker in that business won’t earn that much of money. Secondly, they may advertise anything to change the visitors mind and to create a curiosity to join their business.

So you don’t have to overreact, when you are seeing a new and profitable online business opportunity. First, try to understand them and find out whether that opportunity is legitimate or scam. So you have to invest good amount of time. Go through all the information that is published in that web site. Try to understand that money making system.

One best thing to do is reading the reviews about those business program. Reading reviews gives other opinion about that online business. It helps to take the right decision before signing up for any business program.

Also, look around the website to find out what information they published about the company. Find out the contact address, contact phone number. Better try to make a call to them and check whether they are really active and alive in this world. If no such information is there then you have go into pause mode. Simply avoid that business opportunity because that is not better for you. You could even try to send out a mail to check the existence.

One way, you could visit the Better Business Bureau site to find the real face of that business owner. Use Internic to find out who is the owner and the web site registration etc. That helps to identify and see to the right view of that business.

In short, you have to make a complete analysis before joining any kind of online business. Take more time, find out what others are saying about and take the right decision.

Internet helps any one to start their own business without the need for any much of knowledge. Just a computer and an Internet connection is enough, right ? So learn how to find out the trusted online business and choose the better online business.

Are you looking for a Money Making Online business ? If yes, then you should beware of the SCAMS running over in the Internet.

You know the real world thief, Online Thief’s are something same but sitting behind the screens and making all the best ways to Steal your hard earned money online. Though Online thief’s are available in almost all the type of online businesses, they are acting as real hero’s especially in the home based business.