more scams

TEENY, TINY CHARGES
How it works
Thieves get hold of your credit- or debit-card number and make very small charges of 20 cents to $10. The charges appear on your bill with an innocuous-sounding corporate name, and a toll-free number may appear next to the charge. But when you call the number, it's either disconnected or you're instructed to leave a message and your call is never returned.

That was precisely the scam that the Federal Trade Commission broke up in June, according to spokesman Frank Dorman. "We don't know where the thieves got the card numbers, but we're looking into that," he says. The scam was successful because most consumers either didn't notice the charges or didn't bother to correct them because the amounts were so small. In all, the crime ring racked up more than $10 million in bogus charges, the FTC estimates.

Prevent it
Scrutinize every item on your bill every month, and question those you don't recognize. (Some charges, but not all, will list a phone number.) If you think a charge is fraudulent, notify your card company as soon as possible but no later than 60 days after the charge appears. By law, the card company must remove the disputed amount from your account while it investigates. Worst case, by law you're liable for only the first $50 on a credit card. (In most cases, Visa and MasterCard will cover the full amount.) Debit cards offer fewer protections: You must report the problem two days after you notice it. If you don't, you could be liable for the first $500 in fraudulent charges. If you wait more than 60 days after your statement is mailed, you could lose all the money in your account.

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SKIMMERS
How they work
Skimmers, devices that thieves attach to ATMs or gas pumps to steal your debit account number and password, have been around for years -- and they're not going away. They're getting even more sophisticated.

The devices are placed at the mouth of the card-acceptance slot and record the data off of the magnetic strip on the back of your ATM card when you slide it into the machine. Crooks will usually plant a second device, such as a hidden camera or a transparent plastic PIN pad overlay, that's used to record your PIN when you type it in. In the early days of skimming, the thief had to return to the ATM or gas pump to retrieve the apparatus. But now, Krebs says, wireless technology enables the devices to be rigged to send account information via text message to the thief's cell phone. "The thief can be down the street in a coffee house or halfway around the world," he says. "As long as he's got a working phone signal, he can get the information sent to him right away and start using it."

Prevent it
Use credit cards and avoid using non-bank ATMs. Those machines are generally located in areas that are less secure, making it easier for thieves to tamper with them. And check the card slot: If there's a plastic strip or plastic film sticking out, or anything glued to the card reader, go elsewhere. If your card is stuck inside the card slot, do not leave the machine. Use your cell phone to call your bank branch or the 24-hour service number to report the problem.

shmishing

SMISHING
How it works
"Phishing" is when you get an e-mail from a supposedly trustworthy source, such as your bank or PayPal, claiming a problem with your account and asking for your user name and password. When you respond, your information is stolen and your account is siphoned. "Smishing" is the latest twist on that scam -- instead of getting an e-mail, you get a text message. (The word is a combination of "SMS," for short message service, aka text messaging, and "phishing.") You're told to call a toll-free number, which is answered by a bogus interactive voice-response system that tries to fool you into providing your account number and password.

"It works because people don't give their cell-phone numbers out," Krebs says. "If someone has my cell number, I figure it's someone I know." Thieves can use random-dialing telemarketing services to hit on your number, says Rod Rasmussen, president and CTO of IID, an Internet security firm. If you belong to a credit union, be especially wary -- members are targets because often the call-back number has a local area code, not an 800 number, which makes victims less likely to suspect a hoax, Rasmussen says.

e-mail scam

Good day,
My name is james, I am preparing for my wedding which will come up on the 23rd of october 2010.. by 10:00am here in As I was searching for the best magician to make the day a memorable day for me and my wife and The venue address is 2222 Grand Canal Blvd Ste 1B, Stockton, CA 95207. I saw your advert and I am really impressed about your performance. and you are going to start by 12:00pm and end 1:00pm, How much will you collect if you are to entertain my guess with the travel expenses....i am having 50 guest.

Hope to read back from you.

Thanks 
I wrote back that it would probably be too far for me to travel and I would contact some other magicians I know in his area.

He wrote back:

Quote:

Good to hear back from you....Well I am okay with any thing you do on that day to make it a memorable day for my guests....I will instruct my PA to issue out a cheque for your service and you are going to help me with something because my P.A cannot issued two cheque, I will instruct him to issue you a cheque of $3,700 and after deducting your money you will help me wire the remaining amount to a video grapher that will cover all the wedding day. Let me have your full name and address where the cheque will be send to. Regards.

cafescam

It started out as a phone call from a deaf person, done through an AT&T rep. I live close to New Orleans and the show was supposed to be a (memorable) show for his 16 year old son in Little Rock, Ark. I said it was too far for me and I was not interested.
2 days later my wife got a phone call from a deaf person. Again it was for their 16 year old son. This time it was supposed to be in Lafayette, La., which is still over 4 hours away from where I live. My wife finally got tired of communicating through an AT&T rep., and told the deaf person to E-mail me.
Sure enough they E-mailed them. I was still not interested and quoted what I thought to be a ridiculous price of $1500 for an one hour show. They said that was OK and would I take a credit card? Also, they said they would pay me more money so that I could also pay the DJ. I thought that to be real fishy. I told them I do not take credit cards but they could paypal me the money. I never heard from them after that.

If you are offered a savings of $75, you can bet you will be spending at least $75.

Juts read a heading on aol, followed the link and it was about a baskeyball player named Durant and someone mentioned that he was a second coming of Tiger Woods. This prompted aol to lead off the article with the misleading quote.

Article: Featured Story- Why We Lie - AOL Research & Learn :

Tags: lies, deception

Why We Lie

By ROBIN LLOYD

Corbis

In one study, 60 percent of people lied an average of 2.92 times in 10 minutes.

Learn More:
Lie Detectors

Spot the Lies
See if you can identify common misconceptions in this fun quiz.
Try the Quiz

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We all lie, all the time. It causes problems, to say the least. So why do we do it?

It boils down to the shifting sands of the self and trying to look good both to ourselves and others, experts say.

"It's tied in with self-esteem," says University of Massachusetts psychologist Robert Feldman. "We find that as soon as people feel that their self-esteem is threatened, they immediately begin to lie at higher levels."

Not all lies are harmful. In fact, sometimes lying is the best approach for protecting privacy and ourselves and others from malice, some researchers say. Some deception, such as boasting and lies in the name of tact and politeness, can be classified as less than serious. But bald-faced lies (whether they involve leaving out the truth or putting in something false), are harmful, as they corrode trust and intimacy -- the glue of society.

Kidding Yourself

Many animals engage in deception, or deliberately misleading another, but only humans are wired to deceive both themselves and others, researchers say. People are so engaged in managing how others perceive them that they are often unable to separate truth from fiction in their own minds, Feldman's research shows. For instance, In one experiment, Feldman put two strangers in a room together. They were videotaped while they conversed. Later, independently, each was asked to view the tape and identify anything they had said that was not entirely accurate.

Rather than defining what counts as a lie and to avoid the moral tone of the word "lie," Feldman's experimenters simply asked subjects after the fact to identify anything they had said in the video that was "not entirely accurate."

Initially, "Each subject said, 'Oh, I was entirely accurate,'" Feldman told LiveScience. Upon watching themselves on video, subjects were genuinely surprised to discover they had said something inaccurate. The lies ranged from pretending to like someone they actually disliked to falsely claiming to be the star of a rock band.

The study, published in the Journal of Basic and Applied Psychology, found that 60 percent of people had lied at least once during the 10-minute conversation, saying an average of 2.92 inaccurate things.

"People almost lie reflexively," Feldman says. "They don't think about it as part of their normal social discourse." But it is, the research showed.

"We're trying not so much to impress other people but to maintain a view of ourselves that is consistent with the way they would like us to be," Feldman said. We want to be agreeable, to make the social situation smoother or easier, and to avoid insulting others through disagreement or discord.

Men lie no more than women, but they tend to lie to make themselves look better, while women are more likely to lie to make the other person feel better.

Extroverts tend to lie more than introverts, Feldman found in similar research involving a job-interview situation.

Workplace Lies

Other research has delved into prevarication in the workplace.

Self-esteem and threats to our sense of self are also drivers when it comes to lying to co-workers, rather than strangers, says Jennifer Argo of the University of Alberta. A study she co-authored showed that people are even more willing to lie to coworkers than they are to strangers.

"We want to both look good when we are in the company of others (especially people we care about), and we want to protect our self-worth," Argo told LiveScience.

Related Stories From LiveScience.com

• Scientists Discover Trust Potion
• Cheating on Spouse, Taxes Morally Acceptable?
• Brain Scans as Lie Detectors
• Your Stomach Doesn't Lie
• Why Men Exaggerate Number of Sexual Partners

The experiment involved reading a scenario to a subject, telling them they had paid more than a coworker for the same new car. When the coworker, in the scenario, mentioned what they had paid, $200 or $2,000 more in different versions of the experiment, the subject was asked to report how they would respond.

Argo found that her subjects were more willing to lie when the price difference was small and when they were talking to a coworker rather than to a stranger.

Consumers lie to protect their public and private selves, she wrote in the Journal of Consumer Research with her colleagues from the University of Calgary and University of British Columbia.

Argo said she was surprised that people are so willing to lie to someone they know even over a small price discrepancy.

"I guess closely tied to this is that people appear to be short-term focused when they decide to deceive someone -- save my self-image and self-worth now, but later on if the deceived individual finds out it can have long-term consequences," she said.

Feldman says people should become more aware of the extent to which we tend to lie and that honesty yields more genuine relationships and trust. "The default ought to be to be honest and accurate ... We're better off if honesty is the norm. It's like the old saying: honesty is the best policy."

Story first published May 15, 2006.

(c) 1999-2007 Imaginova Corp. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.