Spot scammers

Add to Bookmarks

Posts:

Account:

Author

Spot scammers

Jim

Joined: Jan 20, 2002
Posts: > 500
From: Belgium
PM

Posted: 2005-07-25 23:07

Allright, I see alot of thread's lately asking if they have to trust a guy/website for buying mobile phones. Here is 10 tips you have to keep in mind before making a deal. Hope it will help some of you.

1| Make sure the website has a contact detail like phone number, street, country, ... a simple email adress is certainly not enough !

2| Go to whois.sc and type in the dodgy website, compare the informations with those on the website (contact details) but most important the creation date of the domain name, 90% of the time they where created less than a month ago. I wouldn't trust a wesbite that claims his adress is from Italy (example) while the domain name is registered in USA.

3| "google is your friend" - search the website on google, use "link:www.url.com" or "site:www.url.com". I wouldn't trust a website that has 0 references on Google.

4| Western Union payment only ? Forget it, 99% it's a scam.

5| Check if the website has an encrypted connection when you register or log in. Don't trust VeriSign logo's on website cause they link to an intern page instead of verisign.com (check the adress bar).

6| "Too good to be true" - If you are asking this to yourself then it is ! Don't believe that someone got hold of 10 mobile phones that still need to be launched on the market with a xxx$ price, that's less than 99$ per unit ... . Too good to be true.

7| They allways use the same emails or form of emails, they all come from Nigeria and they all ask that you urgently transfer the money (with Western Union) as others buyers are interested. Why don't thye sell to the best offer then ? You can find a typical email at the end of this post.

8| They also use some kind of Escrow Site, which might look proffesional (it's rare) so look out at the 7 points I made for such sites. Btw don't trust Escrow, use only secured way like paypal or banktransfer, although you can't have a 100% garantue to have your money back.

9| Don't be fooled by pics, they use non branded photos (or they cut the brand) from several months to give an impression that you never saw those pics on the web so they must be legit, which they aren't

10| If they reply on an email, check if it's done in a proffesional way.

Quote:

if you don't accept escrow, please don't reply so we can save the time.

Very professional

If you still are unsure about a deal, ask it on the forum and we will gladly help you out

. Check this thread and this one for more information.

Now here is a typical scam email:

Quote:

Hey Seller, Good day to you,I saw your items displayed on this site which fascinated my imagination just like the same thing that my son who has just graduated and ready to begin with his own life had asked me to buy for him.I will like to know if you can ship this items to Africa ,but I really want this items to get to him before his birthday that's coming up in 2 weeks time.I will be making the payment through bidpay coz I have an account with them simply because and for their newly introduced measure of security for both buyers and sellers.I will need ur name,address and phone number in order to make the payment as soon as possible.Lastly,I will give u my FedEx account number for the shipping of this item.I will be expecting ur name,address and phone number as soon as possible.Thanks .

N.B: it's late, I didn't check for grammar and my keyboard work's 75% of the time, sorry for that

[ This Message was edited by: Jim on 2005-07-25 22:08 ]

max99