What I’ve learnt, What YOU can do 

Hi all, another IMPORTANT blog. I was watching some well-known Youtubers/entrepreneurs addressing the online fraud that was happening on their channels & how it’s affecting them & what steps you can take to deal with it. 

Wherever you are online, whether you’re a business or just using social media there’s always fraudsters and criminals every step of the way, it’s the anonymity or the “perceived” anonymity & the ease of use. I’ve learnt about a lot of fraudulent & criminal tactics through investigation (call me Columbo) & I’m sharing it with you (and the authorities). 

1/ Not everyone claiming they want to help is trying to help you and not everyone who is presenting you with an opportunity is giving you an opportunity, they may be ‘opportunists’ but it’s not always an opportunity, fraudsters use the same language as legitimate people otherwise their scams wouldn’t work. 

The most important thing you have to look at when considering working with someone is their character (not a character reference from somebody else).

2/ ‘Freebies’ – There’s a lot of scams where people are trying to get hold of your email information to either spam/scam you by shilling products etc or to sell your email info. They ask  you to sign up for free courses etc. Nothing is for free, they are trying to get something from you. 

If you do sign up for something online create a different email for each thing you sign up for that is not associated to anything else and doesn’t have your personal details, with a strong password and don’t give these details to anyone. 

3/ Don’t click links in emails – Go to the website through a search engine if you trust it and don’t even open emails that you don’t trust, if it sounds too good to be true it most likely is. 

4/ Boundaries –  When I’m contacted about my website outside of my contact form that I clearly and purposely set up for contact I automatically know this person is a fraudster. They are purposely bypassing my form to hide their IP information. I don’t even deal with them. My boundary is – I set how I allow you to contact me, if you cross this I don’t deal with you but I forward the emails to the government’s online fraud department, it takes 2 minutes. They’re also trying to see if you’ve opened the email & when. 

5/ If someone contacts you regarding work and doesn’t give you their social media information so you can check them out without talking to them then they are a FRAUDSTER. I have all my information on my website. Another red flag is fraudsters sending emails but not contacting you through social media when the information is clearly there. If they were that interested and genuine they wouldn’t be trying to hide so much.  

6/ ‘Testimonials’ –  A random person contacting me that I don’t know telling me about the ‘amazing things’ other random people that I don’t know, don’t care about or don’t care to know, are saying mean nothing to me. People write testimonials themselves, they will slap on a random name, even do identity theft by using people’s photos without their permission or work in a network with other fraudsters handing out false testimonials to each other. I don’t care what other people say about you I care what I think about you. They can be frauding them too and they just don’t know it, make sure you look into people and companies thoroughly.

7/ People know who you are when they contact you –  They didn’t randomly come across your website/business and do a strategic analysis and got so emotionally moved that they just had to contact you to save you from yourself, they already know who you are. What they don’t know is INFORMATION so they phish for it. They say things trying to get you to confirm/deny so pay attention and don’t confirm or deny anything to random people you don’t know/trust. 

8/ Liars tell on themselves – The reason I read scam emails is nobody will tell you about their fraud and scams better than a fraudster. There’s a lot of nonsense jargon to try & make them sound intelligent, it’s not clear & doesn’t make sense purposely, they contact you but try to sound like they are in so much demand that you need to qualify for them even though they contacted YOU! In a nutshell it’s utter garbage. 

A lying soul is in conflict with the body that has been created to obey God. There’s inner conflict & turmoil because the body is forced to go against its creator & do something it wasn’t designed or wants to do. They put themselves in mental shackles & a mental prison. Thus, to relieve this inner suffering the truth has to come out so they tell on themselves repeatedly. One person I KNOW is a  pathological liar has weird facial twitches when he talks, it shows up in his body language even though he’s desperately trying to hide it. 

9/ My husband doesn’t even deal with people that don’t use a dot.com or free emails – Weird dodgy website names and emails that you can’t say or read that are not memorable are just not legit. Dot.com is universally known, they either can’t afford to do it, don’t want to pay to appear more legit or think they’re going to get shut down by the provider, so they go to all these crappy not known names. 

Do you know of any legit business that doesn’t use dot.com, co.uk etc? NO of course not. Frauds use dot.com also, it’s not hard and fast rules ever. They’re adjusting & changing when it’s not working or fear of getting caught. 

Anyone can set up a free website, email etc there’s no investment so less trust, especially when they’re not a registered business because all this info is public info, a PO box is not a business address either, it is a paid mailing service. 

10/ They create problems then try to sell you the solution – i.e. “guaranteeing” increased followers and interaction if you hire them, they then purchase followers and interact with you themselves. Nobody can guarantee any type of success online or offline. 

The platforms need to do far more to tackle this online criminal activity as well as the laws, anything that involves me directly I hand over to the police. Particularly the internet where they are giving you actual prosecutable and detectable evidence. The police make it easy for you to contact them online even if you do not live in the country. 

If criminals dedicated as much time as they do to their crimes to a legit business they wouldn’t have to be so paranoid every day & probably be successful, but some people WANT to do this. 

This is why all the steps to success no matter how long are important & necessary because if you went from zero to an overnight success you wouldn’t understand all those people hanging around you are not your friends with your best intentions at hand but snakes with smiles looking to harm, rob and destroy you in the process.

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