Scam E-mails – Apply Common Sense

My parents taught me when I was very young that if something looked too good to be true, it probably wasn’t. That kind of good sense applies to detecting scams.

The question to ask when you are offered a program that is supposed to make you lots of money with very little work is this: What’s generating the income in the first place? Somewhere there has to be a service or product that is actually generating revenue. Then ask yourself just how much revenue that product or service is likely to generate. If you’re being asked to participate in advertising that product, or in selling it, then you will be making a (probably very small) percentage of the revenue that the original product generated.

E-mail has made such scams easier to advertise. I’ve been seeing them since the good old FidoNet days, and they haven’t changed much. In fact, I can make a common sense rule that if someone sends you an unsolicited e-mail telling you how you can become rich, that e-mail is a scam. It’s theoretically possible that there’s an exception out there somewhere, but I don’t know of any.

I’ve started following the blog Fools and Sages recently. I’m no financial expert, and it appears to apply a lot of good sense. A post there, Autosurfing Crackdown led me to make the comments above. If you follow the links back to Work at Home Scam – Autosurfing, you’ll see an analysis of this type, only more precise and detailed than I would do. (I’d just say, “I don’t see any actual product or service here” and go on.)

Check it out. It has good advice.