New categories for scams:
Here are a few categories which i believe should be added for convenience. The first category is a very recently rising scam, most rapidly after the pandemic struck.
NSFW scams: This type of scams can be explicit or camouflaged as a legit website but are scams underneath.
Some examples: pretending to be a porn model and making money selling his/her stuff online, a porn website offering a ton of user-controlled porn stuff using mostly stolen creations from legit/verified content creators,etc but instead stealing credit card details of potential victims and making unsubscribing impossible.
Education scams: These usually pretend to be online websites/universities/others offering courses, certificates and possibly even assured jobs but they dupe the customers of their money with a poor service.
Blackmail scams: threatening the potential victims of exposing or leaking their data and breaching their privacy with little or no valid material, usually in the form of emails, text messages,etc.
@Andromeda#156163
I have long advocated for exposing fake news ads and sponsored fake content on legit news websites. While the legit news outlets are not responsible for the content of the ads... they willingly turn a blind eye to fake news generated by ads posted just below real news and they profit from it. The hypocrisy is outrages.
http://scammer.info/d/29254-fake-news-and-scam-ads-on-legit-news-media-sites
While porn and other more seedy websites may wander further into this spammy/scammy territory, I believe the focus should be on those who portray themselves as purveyors of real news. This is where the real content is truly undermined by the fake content and users can and do get duped.
The internet is a dangerous place. Users who go looking for trouble and go clicking on things that they should not are venturing out at their own risk. I believe the intention of scammer.info and the community is to combat scammers who actively disrupt phone and email communications.
Theft of content (NSFW included) is the responsibility of the copyright holder to protect themselves. Anyone who snaps a photo and uploads it online (privately or publicly) should expect it will at some point be available to those who you may not want to see it. Do not upload anything into an online cloud, you do not want to be public. Once you trust someone else with your possessions, it is outside your control. It doesn't matter if it is Apple or Microsoft or Google, you are relinquishing control to them.
Education/webinar/seminar/employment scams are rampant. They are mostly avoidable to the smart consumer. Trump University was busted.
One elaborate scam, I have been tracking for years is Banker's Life. This company sells predatory policies to old people in nursing homes. They try to take medicare money and retirement funds. They also try to recruit agents by approaching job seekers who are totally unqualified to attend a seminar where they are offered a training manual to purchase.
This also raises questions about the big fish such as Amway.
http://scammer.info/d/27820-legal-scammers-a-moral-question/7
So focus on scammers who actively violate the Do Not Call List, those who send non stop spam, and major players with bad practices just within legal bounds. Protecting adult workers will be a fruitless effort.
roku and amazon scammers needs its own category
@Andromeda#156163 There are a lot of Coronavirus Relief 419 scams, and scams that claim to offer “remittance” or whatever for people that have been scammed. Diversifying lists would be great!
Award type scams. Any scam where you apparently ‘won’ something and need to kick up a few bucks to get it. PCH scam comes to mind right off the bat, but I’ve seen plenty of others out there as well.
Thanks @myjackcity#156200 i am pleased with your views on identity theft. Sometimes it’s the fault of those who upload but sometimes it’s unavoidable when you actually sell your creations such as artwork, graphics, etc for their copyright to be violated. That’s what happened to one of my friends who made losses when one such nsfw sites used his content to scam people(website mentioned in one of my earlier posts), without his consent, but managed to get him to sue the websites for violation.
Some notable examples are pirated movies available online, even though they are copyrighted(i bet everyone here knows it), most of the videos you find on PornHub, (some NSFW websites i mentioned have ads hosted on pornhub, which is your view is a legitimate website ‘willingly’ blind to scams), etc.
http://scammer.info/d/40241-nsfw-and-porn-websites-scamming-people-off-their-money