We've all come across that piece of spam or random banner ad on the Internet that catches our interest and sucks us in. The challenge is knowing if the item or service performs as promised. The Internet is too vast to be policed by any single consumer protection effort, so you have to rely heavily on yourself to ferret out the scams before you spend your money. Fortunately, you're not alone in your quest for objective information. Millions of other people post their experiences online. There are also consumer protection sites and blogs that give people the resources to conduct exactly this type of detective work.
Instructions
1. Check references by searching the name of the individual or company offering the thing you're interested in. Google.com has become the standard starting place for such searches because it has very strict rules about what can and cannot be made searchable on their engine. Links are approved manually and then uploaded to the site. Any attempt to submit a URL that does not conform to the rules results in a blanket rejection of the URL and the submitter with no second chances. You are sure to find references to the product or opportunity you're interested in posted by people who have either fallen prey to it or benefited from it.
2. Keep your virus and spyware protection software current. The point of many spam e-mails and spam sites is not to make a sale. The scam simply wants to entice you to open the e-mail or the site. Stealth programs then create and enter back doors into your personal computer data. By the time you realize the text of the e-mail or website is bogus, it's too late and your data has been pirated.
3. Get any official information to be had by logging on to the Federal Trade Commission's site OnGuardOnline. You can educate yourself about Internet fraud and see if the item or opportunity you're researching is listed as potentially fraudulent, or has had complaints filed against it by other consumers.
4. Check who registered the domain name of the site, the spam e-mail or the pop-up banner ad by logging on to WhoIs.net. Learn who is behind the offer that has attracted your attention by doing some quick research on this site. At the very least you may learn the real name of who sent the offer you're investigating. If so, adjust your searches accordingly and gather more relevant information.
5. Verify the legitimacy of an address purported to be the commercial location of the person or group offering the item you're investigating by viewing the actual location via satellite through Google's map program. If the location is obviously not legitimate or is not as described, you know you've identified a scam.
6. Post your own feedback for any opportunity you decide to take advantage of on any or all of the consumer sites you came across during your investigation. It helps everyone investigating a potential scam to have the benefit of your experience to add to their own decision making process.
Tags: consumer protection