Too Good to be True

(Aired on February 12, 2010)

It is hard to believe that people still get fooled by some of these scams that come to us via the internet. The internet has become one of the most-used and enjoyable inventions of the last 20 years. But it is fraught with people who want to rob us of our hard-earned cash. There are those we have some difficulty controlling, the hackers who break into the system and steal our financial information. Who get hold of our credit card numbers and try to access our accounts. We try to be as careful as we can, but internet transactions are more and more common, and in fact financial institutions often give us a break if we access our information online instead of getting a paper statement each month. We must take all precautions we can to avoid giving financial information to the wrong parties.

But there are many forms of fraud on the internet we do have control over. When we get the email from the Nigerian prince offering us a bunch of money to invest for him, we should simply hit the "delete" key on our computer. Don't bother reading it. As the old saying goes "if it looks too good to be true, it probably is." I can't believe how many people still get fooled by this type of scheme.

There are many forms of this scam, but they all amount to the same thing- you get overpaid by this scammer, and then you're to take what's left and send it back to him, or forward it to someone else. The cheque they send you bounces, you've already paid money to someone else, and you're holding the bag. Sometimes it's a few hundred dollars, other times, many thousands. Don't be fooled. Anything that looks suspicious, delete it. Don't respond to emails that seem to be coming from your bank or credit card company, asking you to reconfirm you financial details. Those are scams. Banks don't do that. If you're suspicious, call them to find out what's going on.

It's easy to be fooled on the internet. But there are lots of things to do to protect yourself. Number one is "don't buy into get-rich schemes." They are indeed too good to be true.