Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Legal, Policies, and Ethics

For this blog I am going to focus on online fraud.  According to howstuffworks.com "online fraud is one of the fastest growing crimes."  I remember when I was in junior high I got my first hotmail account.  I thought it was the coolest thing!  One day I checked my email and saw that I had been emailed by someone in Nigeria, I thought there was a mistake for sure!  But I read the email and the person was asking for my help with money they had.  They asked for my information and account information, saying that they would deposit millions in my bank for safe keeping and I would be payed a big chunk of the money.  I thought it was the coolest thing ever!  I went straight to my mom and told her we HAD to do it!  And she looked at me like I was crazy and proceeded to explain online fraud to me.  Since then I have had many of those emails and have come across other online frauds.  I have read about many people falling into the trap of these frauds and losing tons of money.  It has become such a big problem that the FBI now has a part of their website dedicated to avoiding online frauds/scams. 

I think that scammers will only get smarter and more resourceful in their ways.  People have to stay educated and up to date on the best ways to protect themselves from the online frauds.  The FBI's website has awesome tips on how to avoid being scammed and many of the different ways people have been scammed in the past.