How Do Charity Scams Work?
Posted on July 10, 2009 by Online Scams in Articles
How Do Charity Scams Work?
Charity scams take advantage of your kind heart and willingness to help out other human beings in need. Often, scammers will latch onto big disasters happening in foreign countries since it is easier to get you to give up personal payment information over the telephone or Internet if they are located in another country and cannot accept a check.
Inside Look At Charity Scams
Sometimes, charity scams just waste your time. They convince you that forwarding a message around to everyone you know will somehow give money to a poor family or a sick child. They may even state that a child is missing and desperately needs their picture forwarded around so they can be found. In the end, you waste your time and never know that the email was a complete hoax.
In more serious cases, a charity scam robs you of much more than your spare time. It takes real money and in some cases compromises your personal identity. To learn about protecting your idenity please read our “LifeLock review.”
These scams can be carried out over the telephone or through email. Someone contacts you with a sad story that tugs at your heart and makes you want to be a good person and help out. It is often regarding a child, though there are some that have circulated for years about a woman who lost her child in an accident and needs money for a surgery to save her husband’s life.
More modern scams will use the real victims of a large scale natural tragedy somewhere in the world that is receiving a lot of media attention at the time. They will claim to be a legitimate charity organization looking for donations to help the victims of tsunami, hurricane, or other natural disaster.
Often, the disaster will be located overseas so of course the only way they can take your donation is over the phone or through email. You send them a credit card number or initiate a transfer through Western Union and the money never makes it to any legitimate victims. You feel like you have done the right thing and never know the difference.
In some cases, your personal identity can be taken and you could be out a lot more money before you discover what has happened. Some victims may never link the “charity” donation to the theft of their identity at all.
Final Words On Charity Scams
If you are uncertain about an charity, I would highly recommend you check the authentication of the charity by visiting http://www.give.org.
