Summary
People are falling to prey to scams as a result of their own greed. The greed of the victims clouds their better judgement.
Two weeks ago, nine members of a scam 'syndicate' were jailed by a Hong Kong court for tricking 12 victims worldwide into depositing HK$13.88 million into 10 Hong Kong bank accounts. One of the victim was a 27-yearold fund manager. She was told that she had won a HK$45 million lottery. To get the money, she would have to pay up more than $3000,000 as a advance fees. Charmed by the prospect of having a big payday, she paid the money.
Other variations of this trick includes winning a luxury car and winning a lucky draw.
My opinions
1) If only people are not so greedy, the lottery scams can be prevented. Having no greed in one's mind will cause one to have a clear mind to detect a scam. To determine whether it is a scam, one can call up the company to find out whether what the scammer says is true. Even though it is more troublesome, it is better to be safe than sorry. If everyone does this when they receive scam calls, the scammers will be soon "out of buisness".When a person knows about a scam, he or she should immediately call the police to allow the police to catch the those who are behind the scam. By doing this, the scammers will be caught and put behind bars,thus, there will also be lesser victims.
2) I think what the scammers are doing is very wrong. In a economic crisis, like now, there will be more people out of a job. These jobless people will trick others to have money to feed their family.. But what these people did not think of is about the victim's family. The victim may not come from a well-to-do family and the $300,000 may be all that the victim have in the bank account.The scamers are very inconsiderate by not thinking about others and only thinking about themselves.
This is add in after receiving HLin's comment:
3)If I were a parent and i just received a phone call telling me that my child has been kidnapped, I would feel panicky and I also fear for the safety of my child. The scammers are also very inconsiderate as they can do anything to earn money, even making an innocent mother worry about her children. To prevent parent to be worry over a scam, when parents receive a scam call saying that their children is kidnap, the parents should stay calm and not panic. Being calm will allow one to think clearly. The parents can call the child. The parents can also call the school to ask whether the child is still safely in school. As a last resort, the parent can also call the child's friend and ask whether their child is with the friend. If the child cannot be located, the parent should seek help from the police immediately.
4) How does scammers know about the child's particulars? It is most likely that scammers get a child's particulars on the web. Nowdays, teeneagers tend to put up their particulars on blogs and msn. To prevent parents from loosing their hard-earned money,schools also play their part by educating the children. We have talks on cyber-awareness in my school. Also, we should not use our full names and place photos of our selves on blogs.
5)In some serious cases of revealing particulars on the net, credit cards are used illegally. I think the scammers gets the credit card number when the owner of the credit card purchases something on the net. There is a certain number of risk involved when we purchase things on the net using our credit card. Thus, the best idea of purchasing something is to buy it directly at the shop. Although it is more troublesome, it is better to be safe than sorry!
So, we should not reveal our particulars on the net .
