Research On Scams - Timely Warning
Published: Thursday, January 05, 2006 Online-Casinos.com
RESEARCH ON SCAMS - TIMELY WARNING
Start the new year with your wits about you - scams abound out there
The consumers' magazine "Which?" published research on scams
this week, reminding Internet users that there are crooks and villains aplenty
in cyberland, all keen to take your cash.
"Which" reports that as many as 5 million people may have been lured
into responding to con artists, with the most common successful fraud
being people dialling premium rate phone lines to claim non-existent prizes.
Other cons involve fallacious prizes offered by letter or e-mail, adverts for
home money-making schemes, bogus lottery winnings and clairvoyants.
Research by Which? suggests that 28 million people have now been targeted, amounting
to 58 percent of the adult population of the UK.
The results were extracted from a sample of 1,050 people last September in which
respondents were asked if they had seen or been approached by these cons, and
if they had replied to the bogus invitations.
"Considering the number who have been targeted, we are lucky only 10
percent of adults in the UK have responded," said Which? senior researcher
Kassie Smith.
Of those who had been fooled into responding to a fraud, two million people
- nearly 50 percent - had succumbed to an invitation to dial a premium rate
phone line with sky-high per minute costs that were not disclosed upfront. This
con typically involves an automated phone call which tells the victim they have
won a holiday. To claim it they have to ring a phone number starting with 090.
But at GBP 1.50 per minute, and with multiple recorded message calls running
simultaneously, the scam can generate thousands for the con artist. Following
an investigation by Which? the premium rate phone services regulator Icstis
put a 30-day delay on such call charges being handed over by the telephone
companies.
Which? says these cons show no sign of dying out.
Consumers are warned that once an individual responds, it exposes him or her
to further frauds. "You end up on a 'suckers' list' and keep getting targeted
by new scams," the spokesperson said.
The most commonly experienced types of fraud are:
- Premium rate phone calls - 34 percent of adults
- Direct mail - 33 percent
- Home working - 28 percent
- International lotteries - 16 percent
- Bogus clairvoyants - 10 percent
- Pyramid and matrix schemes - 6 percent
