Firstly, please let me thank Sarah for inviting me to be a guest on Birds on the Blog. I feel honoured and humbled to be in the company of such esteemed and eloquent bloggers!
I’m Charles Conway of Clear as Crystal Web Design in Wrexham and my wife Christine and I recently launched a new site aimed at helping Internet users stay safe online.
- Image via Wikipedia
It’s called Scam Detectives and you can find it at www.scam-detectives.co.uk
What prompted us to start Scam Detectives?
We administrate a number of “webmaster@” email accounts on behalf of our clients and over the course of the last 18 months have been overwhelmed with scam emails of all descriptions.
These have ranged from so-called “phishing emails” designed to trick users into handing over their online banking usernames and passwords, to “work from home” fake job offers, which could result in users being arrested and imprisoned for money laundering.
We started to take an interest in the statistics surrounding these scams, and soon found that the losses incurred are terrifying.
In the UK alone, 12% of internet users have fallen victim to online fraud, each losing an average of £875.00 as a result.
That’s 3.5 million people losing over £3BILLION!
According to the survey conducted as part of the Government’s “Get Safe Online” project, whilst 53% of respondents believe that there should be some kind of online safety test to help warn users of potential dangers when surfing the net, only 9% said that they protected their website passwords “carefully”. In comparison, 56% said that they take “great care” of their wallets, purses and credit cards. This highlights the lack of education about Internet security in general and the consequent false sense of security enjoyed by the majority of computer users.
When we heard about a friend having been taken for a ride as a result of buying goods from a fake website, we decided that enough was enough and that we needed to start educating Internet users about staying safe online.
Only gullible people get taken in by online scams, don’t they?
Not at all.
Victims of online scams come in all shapes and sizes, from pensioners to professionals. In fact, many successful business people have been taken in, although exact statistics are difficult to come by, as many people do not report the crimes, either because they are embarrassed to have been taken in, or think that they may have been doing something dodgy in the first place.
Scammers will use sophisticated social engineering techniques to convince you that the scam is genuine. They may use actual names of high-ranking executives within financial institutions, pose as law enforcement officials or seek to convince you that they represent your bank. “Phishing emails” from banks, credit card companies and even HMRC look very realistic and use genuine graphics, addresses and telephone numbers to accurately impersonate organisations with which you have a financial relationship, and they link to even more realistic fake bank login sites to convince you to enter your account details.
Being “clever” simply isn’t enough to avoid getting ripped off!
What can you do to avoid getting taken for a ride?
As with many areas of life, knowledge truly is power when you’re dealing with your affairs online. You can make a start by researching as much information as you can about online scams, viruses and fraud. Try our quiz “Click or Don’t Click” to see some real examples of phishing emails, play our online security games to find out just how “online savvy” you really are, then check out the Scam Detectives Blog to keep up to date with the very latest scams as we become aware of them.
Keep Safe, and tell us in the comments of any scams you have heard of lately
Charles
Sarah Arrow
Chief Bird on the Blog at Sarkemedia.com
Blogging an issue for you? Social media not quite working how it should be? I started out as a transport blogger for a same day courier company, and grew into a kick-ass blog coach as well as creator of Birds on the Blog (listed 3 times by Forbes as a top 100 website for women).
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Hi Charles!
I nipped over to your site and surprised myself by zapping all 5 Hackers in the one game I’ve played to test my knowledge so far
– Work calls… and maybe I don’t want to test my luck too far… but I suspect I’ll return later 
.
The site seems a great idea – informative and non-sales-y. If people find they’re less savvy than they thought (and I might be amongst them), believe they need external advice and possibly help they’d need to pay for, I’d imagine they’d feel safe contacting you.
Well done Linda! I wish everyone was as clued up as you seem to be!! Do check out the rest of the quizzes and let us know how you get on!
Hi Charles!
I nipped over to your site and surprised myself by zapping all 5 Hackers in the one game I’ve played to test my knowledge so far
– Work calls… and maybe I don’t want to test my luck too far… but I suspect I’ll return later 
.
The site seems a great idea – informative and non-sales-y. If people find they’re less savvy than they thought (and I might be amongst them), believe they need external advice and possibly help they’d need to pay for, I’d imagine they’d feel safe contacting you.
Well done Linda! I wish everyone was as clued up as you seem to be!! Do check out the rest of the quizzes and let us know how you get on!
Well done Charles and Christine, am sending my hubby to read all your pages as he does like to click on those HMRC phishing scams…
Thanks Sarah,
I’m pleased to report that we have now had over 35,000 unique visitors to Scam Detectives.
That’s 35,000 people who know more about avoiding scams now than they did in 2009.
Let’s make 2010 the year we say “No More!!”
Well done Charles and Christine, am sending my hubby to read all your pages as he does like to click on those HMRC phishing scams…
Thanks Sarah,
I’m pleased to report that we have now had over 35,000 unique visitors to Scam Detectives.
That’s 35,000 people who know more about avoiding scams now than they did in 2009.
Let’s make 2010 the year we say “No More!!”