Sunday, May 24, 2009

news report

News article: Driven by greed: Why people fall prey to scams.




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 .

4 comments:

YHLin said...

Dear Amanda,

Your opinion is very good. The good thing is that you explain why a person should call the police and why the 'scammers' should not scam.Contacting the police is the only way to deal with the scammers as they can trace the call and the scam syndicate would be caught. The other opinion is excellent because you relate it to the economic crisis. They should not deceive other people and should put themselves in other people's shoe. How would they feel if they received a call that their loved ones got kidnapped? They would feel panic and taste the feeling of about to lose their loved ones. You should also add in more details about how schools can teach students not to leak too much information on the internet because most of the scam calls are because teenagers are too reliant on the internet and have the tendency to reveal their partculars in the internet. Thus, the 'scammers' can easily spot one and target his/her parents. In some serious cases on revealing particulars in the internet, people get kidnapped or their credit card is used illegally by others. In conclusion, we should never be avaricious so we will not be tricked by scams. If we received such scam calls, we must stay calm and dial the police hotline. We should not reveal our particulars on the internet.

HLin

csh_amanda said...

Thanks Hlin for the commens.

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 can call the child. The parents can also call the school to ask whether the child is still msafely 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.

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.

csh_amanda said...

In some serious cases of revealing particulars on the net, credit cards are used illegally. I think that by placing the credit card number on the net, the person is inviting for trouble as he is attraacting people to use his credit card. Placing the credit card number on the net is simply a waste of money!!!

YHLin said...

Dear Amanda,
your replies are very good. Except one. What do you mean by 'Placing the credit card number on the net is simply a waste of money!!!' It is purchasing things that needs money, not putting the credit card number that needs money. Adults and teenagers like to purchase their items on the internet because it is faster.