Internet scams can be a scary thing, especially if you aren't sure how to tell if something is a scam or a legitimate opportunity. They can cost you money, or worse, can compromise your identity, leading to identity thieves taking credit out in your name, which can take several years to fix. Fortunately, internet scams are some of the most avoidable, if you know what to look out for, and how to avoid them entirely:
1. Be weary of e-mails that require IMMEDIATE ACTION!
If a company you do business with sees an urgent problem with your account, they will call you. If you receive an e-mail from a company you do business with in which it provides a link for you to click and asks you to sign on to take immediate action, chances are good that you have yourself a Phisher. Phishers send out e-mails to hundreds of thousands of people, hoping to get even a small fraction of a percentage of people responding.
These e-mails look legitimate, but rarely are. A good warning sign to spot a Phishing scam is the level of urgency the e-mail is trying to instill in you. A good rule of thumb: If an e-mail is encouraging you to act now or insisting that you don't delay, whether it's telling you there's a breach on your account, or that you've won the lottery, you should take time to think. If you have a relationship with the company, call the number you have on record, or the one on the website you bookmarked or normally type in. If you don't have a relationship with the company, hit the delete button and never look back.
2. Look at the address bar and check for HTTPS transmission
Any time you're asked to enter in a username or password, you want to check the address bar at the top of your browser to make sure the first letters before the address, otherwise known as the protocol, say HTTPS. I'm not going to quiz you on this, but for those of you that need to know what it means, HTTPS stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure, while HTTP only means Hypertext Transfer Protocol.
A website becomes secure when it purchases a certificate from a central authentication agency that your browser recognizes as legitimate. The authenticator and the website you visit exchange certificates, and if they match up, you can be pretty confident that you're on the website you want to be on. If, however, you get an error along the lines of "This certificate is not trusted", you want to be careful. That means that for whatever reason the certificate the website you visited sent out is not registered with a central authentication agency. Unless you fully trust this website, you want to be very careful putting in personal information if this happens. This is when a hacker might be Pharming, or redirecting legitimate traffic to their bogus website. It's sort of like Phishing, just a little harder to spot.
3. Get an Anti-Virus software and keep it up to date
Anybody going online needs to have an up-to-date anti-virus software. AVG Free consistently gets higher marks than some anti-virus programs that charge you $60 or more. Have a budget? Check out Norton AntiVirus, BitDefender Antivirus Plus, or BitDefender SecureAnywhere Antivirus. Kaspersky Antivirus has also received high marks.
source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372364,00.asp
4. Remember that your phone is a computer too
Smart phones are much, much more powerful in 2013 than computers were in the year 2000. Your computer in the year 2000 could get viruses, and your smart phone can do. Be careful when receiving text messages, even from people you know. Often text messages can be originated from another person if your friend or co-worker has been fooled into clicking on a link, and you could be the next victim to begin spreading a virus if you click on it too. These links can also request personal information from you so that you can "claim your $500 Wal-Mart shopping spree".
While iPhones tend to be relatively safe because they are protected environments, there have been cases of viruses getting onto iPhones recently. Androids are more prone to viruses, so consider downloading Lookout Free to protect yourself. No matter what, viruses are not the only thing to watch out for, so exercising as much caution on your phone as you would use on your computer is vital to protecting yourself from getting scammed.
