3 Dangerous Financial Scams and How to Avoid Them

Taking responsibility for our own financial health involves a lot of deliberate action on our parts. We actively monitor and research our investments, budget for our income and expenses, and try to avoid making decisions that would negatively impact our overall wealth.

But another aspect of keeping your financial situation healthy is to be on guard against those who would seek to do you harm. We’re talking about dangerous financial scams here. One thing that makes these scams so dangerous is that it’s not always so obvious that they’re scams.

Here is some advice on three of the most prevalent financial scams and how you can protect yourself from them.

One common variant is where you’ll receive a Facebook message from a friend who claims to be travelling, has lost their wallet and cell phone (so you can’t contact them directly), and needs you to wire them money so they can buy a plan ticket home. But the person who contacts you is actually someone who’s hacked your friend’s account.

Another scam is based on the popularity of Facebook’s various “social games.” One key element to these games is that you often perform better and score more when you interact with more people through the game. And if your real friends aren’t interested in playing those games with you, you might be tempted to connect or form “friendships” with other players you don’t know on Facebook just to do better in your game. Unfortunately, many of these players are phony accounts that were set up with the express purpose of connecting with players such as you, and then trying to run scams, by harvesting your personal information or targeting you directly.

Not surprisingly, a common theme throughout these dangerous scams is the online element. Even though we’ve become conditioned over the years to guard against in-person scams, we haven’t quite developed the same degree of healthy skepticism in our online interactions.