Business Opportunities and Internet Marketing Systems that Don't Work

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Not Quite a Scam

What is a Scam?

Internet Marketing Deception

Business Opportunity Deceptions

How Come They Work Sometimes

Home Employment

Home Business

Marketing Truth

Internet Products

Red Flags

What is a Scam?

A genuine scam is something that meets one of the following criteria:

• It involves fraud.
• It involves deliberately and provably misleading information.
• It contains elements or instructions that are illegal.
• It is backed by a person who is intent on robbing their fellow beings.

Scams may involve the sale of goods that there is no intention to deliver.

They may lack a product as defined by FTC regulations.

Scams may just perpetuate false information, but the ones we are most concerned with are those which harm you financially, or personally.

A scam may be created for the purpose of getting your sensitive financial information so the receiver can misuse it.

Scams are generally far easier to spot than near-scams. You see, near-scams set out with the same essential goal - get the money, no matter who gets hurt - but they do so in a way that protects them from legal consequences. They will say all the right things to avoid liability, while giving no assurances of anything, only the illusion that they have done so.

The rules about scams are simple:

• Do not give credit card information to an unknown source.
• Do not click a link in an email to go to any online account. Always type the URL into your browser fresh.
• Do not purchase anything from a site without a Contact and About page that helps you feel that the company is trustworthy.
• Do a net search for the terms "scam" or "fraud" and the name of the thing you are considering purchasing, or the name of the company or person you are considering purchasing it from.
• Read the copy very carefully. Make sure the site answers your questions. If it does not, email the seller, and see if they answer you promptly and with usable information.
• Check for a guarantee policy. Many people will lie about these, so take it with a grain of salt, but if there are guarantee limitations, make sure they are ones you can live with.
• If it involves anything that you know is illegal or unethical, you know it is a scam, and you are going to be the victim. No one who starts by suggesting something illegal is going to be honest with you!

If you get an uneasy feeling about anything online, LISTEN to that feeling! Generally there are reasons why you feel that way, but they may not be ones you can easily identify and give a label to - your subconscious is often far quicker at keying in on those things than your conscious mind is.

There are no guarantees that you will not get scammed, but you can reduce your risk enough that it will be rare, or it will be small things that you get taken on. And that is a huge benefit.

Written by Laura Wheeler, MicroBusiness Website Developer, and founder of the MicroWebmasters Alliance

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