25 Most Popular Scams You Should Watch Out For

From high profile office buildings to shady street corners scammers are everywhere. Although we may be tempted to think that we’re smart enough to avoid their underhanded scheming, everyday thousands of people are conned out of their money and countless lives are ruined. In order to help keep you from becoming another statistic we’ve compiled this list of the 25 most popular scams you should watch out for.

View list here
http://list25.com/25-most-popular-scams-you-should-watch-out-for

FTC Releases Top 10 Complaint Categories for 2012

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released its top 10 complaint categories for 2012. For the first time ever, the agency received more than two million complaints. Of the two million complaints, 18 percent were related to identity theft. Of those 18 percent, almost half were related to tax or wage fraud.

Here is a complete list of the top 10 complaint categories:
Identity Theft - 369,132 complaints
Debt collection - 199,721 complaints
Banks and Lenders - 132,340 complaints
Shop-at-Home and Catalog Sales - 115,184 complaints
Prizes, Sweepstakes and Lotteries - 98,479 complaints
Impostor Scams - 98,479 complaints
Internet Services - 81,438 complaints
Auto-Related Complaints - 78,062 complaints
Telephone and Mobile Services - 76,783 complaints
Credit Cards - 51,550 complaints

The FTC uses the Consumer Sentinel Network to record complaints throughout the year. The secure database is available to more than 2,000 civil and criminal law enforcement agencies across the country and helps agencies research cases and track targets.

Learn more about the 2012 complaints from FTC here
http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2013/02/sentineltop.shtm

7 Online Scams and How To Avoid Them

by Max Alexander

Swindlers may be following your every tweet and post, looking for a chance to fleece you. Here's how to confound seven fast-growing cons.

Read article here
http://www.rd.com/money/7-online-scams-and-how-to-avoid-them

Clark Howard IMPT Helpful Links

Page devoted to a wide variety of topics, with loads of helpful links, guides and more!

Click here to view his page
http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/clark.howard

The Sneakiest New Shopping Scam (Text Messages)

By the editors of Shop Smart Magazine

How it works -
"Smishing" is the latest twist on that scam (Phishing) — 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.

Read more on this newest scam here
http://shopping.yahoo.com/articles/yshoppingarticles/448/the-sneakiest-new-shopping-scams

Ebay, Fraud, Scams & More

You will find a compiled thread post consisting of the following topics:
Scams, Ebay, Fraud, Consumer Protection, MLM's and more
http://www.ryze.com/posttopic.php?topicid=731666&confid=1022

This topic post thread houses some of the important sites I have looked at and on occassion, have actually used and contacted.