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An extremely beautiful and intelligent girl in her early teens is living under constant fear of an impending catastrophe, her own death! …. unless….. She has been diagnosed with a growth in her brain and the only way is to undergo a surgery.  The location of the growth is such that even a minute discrepancy in operation can turn her into a vegetable and therefore the surgery can be conducted only in a very specialized institution.  So far so good, but the difficulty is in finding money for this very expensive surgery.  A donation appeal appears in the classified pages directing readers to a webpage with details of the girl and bank details.  Money pours in from far and wide and all the donors pray for the success of surgery.  Weeks later, the website is no more visible and all the donors start wondering whether they have fallen victims of treachery.  Quite possible because in the cyberworld everyone is invisible or the faces are all masked!

There are scams in hordes on the internet.  It has been reported recently that many individuals have received mails, purported to be from respectable people, appealing for funds from an overseas location where the person claims to be located at that point of time.  The appeal for financial help sound genuine – he was robbed of all money and credit cards and is helpless in a friendless country.  The recipients will not think twice before responding with funds only to realize in few days that the person has never left the country and the appeal was a fraud!

Even if you have a hunch that something is wrong, is there any way one can check the authenticity of the mails that get lodged in your inbox?  Yes, there are ways of checking.

Free Tools

There are quite a few Internet free tools that let you conduct background checks. You can trace the IP address from where the email originated with the use of the header of the mail.  A mail purported to have been sent from Sydney Australia might actually have been originated from a very near location to your home.  “What is my IP address” is a helpful free tool.  IP address can be checked to reveal geographical locations.  However, beware that scammers may use proxies to hide their actual location.

There are tools on the net (whois.domaintools) that will allow you to investigate and find owner of the suspected website and also how long the site has been live. Who-called-us is another tool which can help you identify the caller.  Google search of a name can reveal the email address of the suspected person.

Watch for signs of scams

The above tools may only help you get an identity of the sender, but remember there is no guaranteed system tool that vouch for the accuracy of the information because the scammers are smarter than the average person.  You can be cautious and look for telltale signs of a scammer.  Scammers will act desperate to convince you that you are the only one who can help him and your immediate action is essential.  He may try to take advantage on your ‘trusting’ nature.  When he suspects that you are trying to get out of a chat session, he may come up with a new issue requiring your help to make you stay back so that he can tighten the loop around your neck.

Fake identity can be manufactured, but maintaining that identity is difficult because the person is not what the fake identity tries to proclaim.  The scammer is bound to falter at some point, so your best defense may be to keep scammer with a glimmer of hope.  You can then be extra watchful for any minor deviation from what is stated and if you start questioning on that point, the scammer may panic and run.  Just as fake identify, do not trust in what you see – photographs can be stolen from any number of websites to manufacture an appealing profile, but the actual face behind the photograph could be of a habitual rogue person.

You should also exercise cautions in order to protect your own identity when going online.  Until you are sure of the other person, never give out personal information without a purpose.  If you have to, make sure that this is a legitimate website.  Look for the https prefix in the address line of the website as also the padlock sign for secured sites. All banking transaction websites must be with the https prefix.  PayPal is a good option for making payments if you are not sure of the authenticity of the site.