Phishing is one of the most common scams that happen around the world every day. The motive of the scammers from this type of scam is to gain your personal information by tricking you into it.

One of the most preferred mediums of phishing is email. The scammers either hack into the person who regularly emails you and send the scam message from their accounts or make one that is almost the same looking like those people or companies. This reduces the suspicion of the victim as they think it is legitimate mail.

Another type of phishing is when the scammer pretends to be an authority or the government and asks you to give your personal details in any context that might instill a fear such as a problem in filing taxes or that your account has been hacked and they need details to solve the issue. Phishing can also occur through text messages. As unbelievable as this sounds, a lot of people fall prey to this kind of scam every day.

As phishing can be of various intensities, it is not always easy to filter legit messages and scams. One of the ways is to stay extremely cautious and read carefully before implementing any action.

The shopping scams are vast and infinite in nature. The major cause of such a spike in shopping scams is that it is comparatively harder to detect and till the time the victim realizes, it’s too late. It’s a sure case that in our lives on social media, we have stumbled upon a deal on any social media platform or through email and SMS which was too good to be true. An awesome product at such a low price, you must have thought it was an amazing deal and some might have even gone ahead to buy the product. Upon sending the cash in, you might even get a confirmation mail. However, the product was never reached. If this has happened to you, you were probably scammed. This is known as a shopping scam. In such scams, the scammers create fake websites that look strikingly similar to legitimate websites and showcase the items at a very low price. Another type of scam is through social media platforms where these scammers make use of the pop-up ads and trap the victims.

This is considered one of the oldest scams in the records and is also known as Nigerian scams due to the first scams being had claimed from the same place. In such scams, the scammer will send you a mail claiming to be a rich person who needs to either buy a property in your country or needs to move out of their own country. Furthermore, the scammer will ask you to help them by sending in a little money for the transaction in return for a share in their property. Lured in by the dream, many innocent victims will readily send in the money. the scammer, upon receiving the money will either ask for more in the name of various other taxes and transaction fees or flee with the money leaving no trace of themselves.

Cryptocurrencies came into the world like a game-changer. With the public getting access to a bunch of digital coins that they can trade or invest digitally, there was a big boom in the finance market and that period saw a huge increase in the number of traders who signed up to trade and invest. However, with the increase of investors rose the line of scammers as well. Scammers made use of Cryptocurrencies to lure in victims and steal their money. They either made their own scam brokerage firms or make an exact replica of a legitimate brokerage firm. Then these scammers conduct cold calls in which they call up random people and convince them to invest and be a part of their firm. A majority of their victims fall prey to the scams due to the irresistible offers that these scammers offer. Upon registering for the cryptocurrency scam, the scammers coax them into putting in more and more money into their accounts. Once they get most of the money out of the victim, they flee away.

Such scams are usually targeted at people who are in financial debt and in desperate need to get out. These scams have a higher success rate as the victims are under stress and therefore pay less attention to the fact of whether it is a scam. In debt help scams, the scammers send an email or an SMS to the victims stating that they can help the victim out of their financial crisis by lowering their loan interest rate or anything of that sort. Believing in these lies, the victims readily give their money in the hope of getting rid of the financial crisis.

These types of scams are comparatively new as it includes the social media platforms. In social media takeover scams, the scammers catch hold of your social media profile and hack it. They will start posting inappropriate and illegal content or photos on the victim’s profile and ask for money or other personal information as ransom. This usually puts the victim under a great deal of stress and compels them to give in to the scam because social media connects a lot of people to them which can have a risk of creating a bad image of the victim. This is one of the cruel and insensitive scams as they not only rip the victim of their valuable money but also puts their character in question.

This situation might be something that every one of our readers might relate to is that when we go into an illegal site for downloading a movie or anything of that sort, a message takes over the entire screen stating that our phone has been hacked by a virus and all the information on your phone will be encrypted by this virus. They will also provide an answer to this which is to download the antivirus software scam that they have provided. This is a very common scam that many people have fallen victim to. In such scams, when the victim clicks on the option given to download antivirus software, the victim is directed to a page that either asking for a piece of personal information or downloads ransomware instantly. Such ransomware will lock out your entire phone and later need a key to decrypt the virus. By this point, the scammers contact the victim and ask for a huge amount of money in return for the key and get a lot of money from the victim before providing them with a key.

In this era, cybercriminals take advantage of every one of our emotions and curate psychological traps for their victims. Dating scams are one of these types of scams that attack the psychological sides of the victims making them mentally weak and prone to such scams. The scammers will very carefully create fake profiles on dating apps and social media platforms to lure the victims in. Once the victim starts talking to the scammer, this fraud will work towards building a relationship with the victim. After they establish trust between the victim and the scammer, the cybercriminal will start asking for money on the pretext of genuine reasons such as financial crisis. Trusting their apparent partner, the victim will keep sending money whenever asked. After getting a sufficient amount of money from the victim, the scammer vanishes without a trace. This is when the victim realizes the scam.

This type of scam happens a lot like the Rich Family scams. In such scams, the scammer will contact you through email or sudden pop-up ads on websites stating that you are a lucky customer and have won a prize or you have won a lottery. They will also state other irresistible offers such as a complimentary car or any other thing. At the end of the message or mail, they will ask the victim for some money to complete some legal forms or shipping charges of the prize. Excited at this, the victim usually gives in the money and waits for the prize or the money to arrive.

This is apparently an optimal way for the scammers to get your personal information out of you. In such scams, the cybercriminal will pretend to be a school student or a research worker who needs to take a survey for one of their projects. This survey will ask for much of your personal details that shouldn’t be revealed to everyone in midst of various questions that might be related to the question. In order to help the person in their projects, victims fill in the form and unintentionally give the scammers the personal information that they wanted. These scammers will then use this personal information against you in various cases such as credit card frauds, or taking over your social media profile, etc.