Internet Business Frauds

Internet Business Frauds
Promises of significant amounts of cash, goods and services lure innocent victims without overlooking its consequences.

“When it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!”
“Nine out of ten fraudsters avoid prosecution and 40% of those avoided prosecution continue scamming.”

Common Scams

1. ‘Upfront Payment’ Mass Marketing Fraud
Victims are usually asked to pay upfront for a service/product/scheme before receiving them. Upon payment, sometimes half, the victim losses contact with the provider and bears full responsibility on its cost.

Related to Nigerian Letter Scams and Overpayment Scams.

2. ‘Blank Promises’ Business Investment Fraud
Victims are often pressed by marketing and sales personnel claiming to work in a legitimate, big company. Often done over the internet or the telephone. In order to portray professionalism and gain trust, they often equip themselves with excellence – Receptionist, fake sales office, fake addresses, professionally designed brochures and investment counselors. When the victim decides to give it a go, which often involved a substantial amount of investment money, everything is voided and the salesperson goes missing.

Related to Security Scams and MLM Scams.

3. Corporate Frauds
Includes fraud by or against a company. Often, the promising company (fraudster) provides misleading information to shareholders or top-level management to invest in a particular service and/or product for individual financial gain. Included are partnership programs without reading terms and conditions, incorrect information entry on the financial report, siphoned money for individual gain charging to the company without receiving, fictitious revenues, concealed liabilities and expenses.

Related to Financial Report Scams and Wire Transfer Frauds.

Phishing Frauds

Phishing Frauds
An act of stealing sensitive/private/personal information from a particular individual through falsified claims/mimicking as a legitimate enterprise, ‘identity theft’.

You may have received an email telling you that your account status is inactive and needs reconfirmation before it’s deleted or an email saying that someone subscribed this (your) email address (yourname@yourdomain.com) and if you want to be removed, follow the link; later then takes you to another unsolicited site which compromises your security – You’re loaded with spywares and malwares. Loads of information are then extracted from your computer, i.e. Emails, phone numbers, addresses, credit card information, passwords, account details, personal details without you even knowing or your computer crashes and/or slows, or, your email is suddenly loaded with more and more spam mails.

These are phishing frauds which are still very rampant in the internet world. As much as Glocorp would like to address your concern regarding this matter, we’re trying very hard to help you through our process of understanding spam, scams, frauds and cheating in the internet world today. All those endless ‘cheating’ schemes bore your day and as these artists become more and more sophisticated, chances are that you may give in into one of the frauds, thinking that it’s actually legitimate when it’s not.

Among the common phishing scams and patterns are:

1. Mimicked sites are created and you unwittingly submit personal information. (Spoofed Site)
Sometimes, redirection and link clicking from your email is dangerous especially when unsolicited emails are received. Never click on redirecting links. Should a bank address your concern, ring the bank or type the address manually on the address bar of your browser. Mimicked sites are sites which are copied by legitimate sites, then bluffs a redirected user into entering personal information.

2. Deceptive links/Camouflaged links.
Sometimes, a link can appear to be legitimate but unknown to the user as a camouflaged link. Meaning to say, what is written on the text that you read isn’t relevant with the site that you’ll be redirected to after clicking on the link. A pop-up then appears and links you to other websites or mimicked sites rather than the legitimate site which you think links you to.

3. Businesses asking you to reply by mail, requesting personal information.
All honest and professional businesses in this world will never require you to send personal information through an insecure manner – By instant messaging, email, unencrypted file, etc.

4. Masked/Direct linking.
A lot of professional businesses today do not do direct linking as a more protective manner to personal information. Disbelief all direct links to access your accounts or statement containing likes stating “Click here to access your account automatically”. Masked linking contains part or whole term of a particular company’s name to direct a user to click it, then the scam happens – The user is redirected to another site.

5. A very immediate response required.
Out of the blue, if you receive a message from any company saying, “Your account will be terminated within 24 hours if you do not respond to this immediately” or “The webmaster of site XXX is filtering inactive users. Reply immediately (within 24-48 hours) to confirm your active status”. There are many cases in which you can forget to verify your account or provide extra information to a service you requested before, but usually, professional businesses give more time for their busy consumers. Scammers might claim account compromise also.

6. An impersonal statement.
“Dear valued customer” or “Dearly beloved” or “Respected consumer” or “Hi all” are examples of general impersonal statements made by fraudsters during a scam scheme. Always take precautionary methods first before pursuing directions in the email.

7. Software release after direct linking.
An email may direct a user to click on a link, then later move to a site that releases unsolicited programs i.e. Trojans, spywares, malwares, keyword logging-wares, etc. These are dangerous applications as your personal information may be compromised. Worse, you may see tons of window pop-ups appearing non-stop on your computer portraying adult sites. Sometimes, it may come in a form of attachment – ‘files to download’, images like *.bmp images, and video files.

8. Pitiful cries for help, asking to join ‘legitimate’ non-profit organization.
Again, out of the blue, a ‘legitimate’ company sending an email would request you to join their online march for a cause or sign a petition, usually requesting you to fill in personal particulars for verification, contact or signature purposes. Check out the company first, and again, do not click on any redirected links.

SEO Frauds

Internet Marketing: SEO Frauds
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) frauds

Many unsolicited companies and individuals claiming they are SEO experts brought fear and terror into honest services of SEO. SEO frauds were rampant back then when Yahoo.com and Google.com made their pitch into the search engine industry, reaping millions of dollars from unsuspecting companies in need of business growth. SEO criminals scam companies that usually have no idea about SEO and its works, sometimes including SEM techniques. How many SEO ‘specialists’ would then come and go before you decide to choose? Here are a few SEO related frauds available since the day SEO scamming started.

1. SEO criminals that guarantee #1 ranking.
None of the huge search engines like Google.com, Yahoo.com or MSN.com could offer any special ranking on their site for a price, particularly Google. Back then, Overture (Yahoo! Owns them) offers a range of price for top 3 results. This service was then halted, and removed. Nobody can guarantee #1 ranking. Even if it hits #1, positions vary now and then.

2. SEO criminals that rushes their customers or promises results in a short period of time.
SEO isn’t and will never be able to prove its power in a short period of time (e.g. 1 week, 1 month). SEO is a complicated science that requires a consultant to creatively think, improvise solutions and collectively gather data and knowledgebase from his client and the search engines. There is no shorter route to a higher ranking. It’s plain hard-work with loads of time taken to perfect SEO on a particular website.

3. SEO criminals that compromises on short-term optimization.
A famous SEO fraud. Lower cost, shorter optimization period (as said) and excellent results. SEO criminals usually offer these services without any relevant results. Walk away if you should receive any short term SEO. It may work, but you’ll have to pay more and more to get it working. Other services then may come in, premiums are charged.

4. SEO criminals that is secretive about SEO.
SEO criminals always want to get to the point. They do not waste time on sharpening their skills or perfecting their SEO techniques with information because they are out there mainly to scam, to commit fraud, and to get instant cash. A good SEO company would provide all information in detail, including their proposals, without you even asking or thinking of. A good SEO service provider wouldn’t reveal their trade secrets, but will explain to you in detail every bit of SEO.

5. SEO criminals force or without your notice links to their website; Owns your domain.
SEO criminals usually force links to be planted in their client(s) site in order to back-link to their site, or holds ownership of their client’s particular domain. There is no part in SEO or SEO’s business would ever ‘command’ back-linking or ownership of domain. The business is yours, the site is yours. Nothing should be owned by any SEO provider.

6. SEO criminals that sell you software for excellent optimization.
Certain SEO criminals could throw their clients a special offer with computer software(s) that help optimize their pages on search engines or the ability to type keywords directly to an Internet browser’s URL bar. These are hoaxes, as SEO has nothing to do with any software in its optimization – Most available today are SEO reporting tools, SEO research tools and so forth.

7. SEO criminals that cheat/do not deliver.
An excellent SEO service provider usually reports a few times, at least once a week regarding the process of their optimization. A hardcopy report should come out every fortnight, follow up calls informing the client about what’s going on. It takes time to watch rankings climb up the ladder. It involves a lot of process and complicated structures. Results should be able to be seen on the 3^rd month from the commencement period.

8. SEO criminals claiming to give continuous top rankings as long as you pay them.
SEO isn’t about holding your site hostage or a particular product with huge investments. It’s all about techniques, content building, thorough research on the industry and market, inbound likes, on and off the page factors and so forth. It’s about management and vigorous work where marketing agencies do for you, but more than that.

9. SEO scammers claim to be able to submit your site up to thousands of search engines.
Crawler-based engines like Google do not need submission – They find you by themselves based on keywords, relevance and links on and to your website. Submission could be done manually, but it’s not necessary since these ‘spiders’ are able to seek and find you out IF your SEO service works. There’s no point submitting your site to other search engines. These trillions of page would mask you out. These search engines are famously known as FFA engines (Free-for-all).

10. SEO scammers claim to have relationships with Google.com, Yahoo.com, Ask.com
It’s impossible to ever have a partnership that guarantees higher ranking with Google, Yahoo or Ask.com unless your SEO provider is using Pay-per-click (PPC) – Also under certain circumstances. There is never an easy way into the market of SEO, as honest, inspiring SEO experts are a combination of a technical company conceptualizing beyond SEO only.

Common SEO abuses:

1. Cloaking/back-linking/Shadow domain.
A SEO company directs unsolicited traffic to the site by using deceptive/irrelevant pointers. This can also be counter-productive as directing can occur to your competitor(s) or your SEO service provider’s site. Clients will then experience losses, even before this happens. SEO is mostly about getting QUALITY visitors that will CONVERT into customers, not millions of visitors without any interest on your business.

2. Hidden links/Doorway pages/Link scamming
A SEO scammer places a huge list of keywords and tags are placed on a site, informing clients that it’s a way to ease query works and will boost ranking since it has many tags. This is absolutely wrong and may cause the site to link to other irrelevant pages besides draining link popularity.

Internet Fraud – Scams

Internet Fraud – ‘Hello, scam.’
Internet frauds are on the rise, endangering more and more internet users’ everyday. Take a deep breath and read on – This article may just save your skin.

Modernization and revolution has then painted new faces for the Internet. Frauds and thefts are now rampant as international trade over the internet have tripled in volume over the past decade – Leaving billions of users worldwide vulnerable not only to classic ‘pyramid’ fraudulent’ or ‘credit card scams’ but new, unsuspected frauds that are bound to occur for the rest of the Internet’s lifespan. At Glocorp, we’re constantly learning as we combat frauds to reduce, if preventing isn’t possible, any scams that comes along. Fraudsters know no limits when they’re into the scamming business. Since it’s a cheaper, more effective way to cheat and run schemes to worldwide Internet users’, internet fraud paved its way to glory during the early 90s’, forcing governments and the police to set up organizations and amend new laws to combat internet fraud. Aggressive fraudulent targets range from senior citizens (targeting their retirement funds) to naïve internet users that might be new or unsuspecting to a fraud program itself. One of Glocorp’s initiatives to combat frauds is to provide you with information regarding previous consumer scams and anything related to it. The chart adjacent to this article displays the types of common fraud that are, or was rampant on the internet. One the major fraud highlights is Internet Marketing: SEO fraud. Glocorp is an honest company offering numerous online marketing, designing and consulting services. As much as we hate crimes, frauds, scams, bad schemes and cheaters like the rest of the society do, Glocorp is playing a role in countering these schemes by providing you information regarding common frauds available. As our Security policy is to service, support and secure our client’s security needs related to all providing solutions, our experts are constantly on the go to help you get the best out of our solutions without any security hassles or worries.

Types of Fraud Credit Card frauds Phishing frauds SEO frauds Internet Business Frauds