I recently stumbled upon an awesome website stophcommerce.com, which tells the story about a women who loses an extreme amount of money to scams. H Commerce stands for hacker commerce. StopHCommerce.com defines H Commerce as:
“To make money from the illegal or exploitive use of technology to compromise consumer and business data. Originating from the practice of “hacking”, this global industry now generates more money than illegal drug trade and is cited by the U.S. government as one of the most significant threats to the country’s security and economy.”
People fall for scams so easily because scammers make everything seem real. This happens a lot while trying to sell things on the internet via websites such as Facebook and Craigslist. Also internet scammers can pay for collections of email lists, which they use to send their scheming emails.
Generally Scams consist of:
- Shipping an item to another country
- Offering more money than you’re asking
- Some excuse why it needs to be shipped
- English is broken, not always the case
How to protect yourself:
- Meet face-to-face
- Don’t reply to emails that seem suspicious
- Don’t assume all emails are legitimate. It’s extremely easy to spoof email addresses.
If you have a question whether or not you may be a target, I may be able to identify whether it is or not. Either leave a comment or send me an email.
Check out the following videos, they have a lot of good details and story. The videos explain the story of one women who lost over $400,000 to scams.
Episode 1 – HCommerce History:
Episode 2 – The Trap is Set:
Episode 3 – Caught in The Web:
Episode 4 – Help is on the Way:
Episode 5 – Ending the Scam:
Episode 6 – Moving Forward:
