Because of the convenience and speed of the internet, emails
play the most important role in facilitating online communications, especially
in the workplace. At the same time, by taking advantage of the anonymity
provided by the internet, scam artists find email to be the best means for
defrauding people and extracting money from them by adopting illegitimate
means.
The US government has appointed various authorities for
redressing complaints of scam emails and protecting people from them. When
people fall victim to any kind of email scams, they feel embarrassed and like
to keep the matters to themselves. Under such circumstances, reporting scam
mails to appropriate agencies is the best option.
As the first step for reporting scam emails, go to Internet
Explorer on your computer, click the gear icon and click on ‘Safety’.
Thereafter, click your mouse on Report Unsafe Website, when a web page will be
opened. You should then report to the website. An alternate to this is to click
the check box, appearing next to the message found on your Outlook inbox.
Thereafter, click the arrow lying next to Junk and point your cursor to the
Phishing scam.
As the second step for reporting scam emails, you can go to
Microsoft Outlook; 2010 or 2013 on your computer. Then, right click the
suspected scam message and point on the icon “Junk” and click on ‘Report Junk’
for reporting the scam email. For getting additional information, you can see
overview of the junk email filter.
As the third step for reporting scam emails, forward the scam
emails to the Federal Trade Commission at uce@ftc.gov. They will investigate
into the matter, track the scam emails and find out the sender of the scam
emails. They have the authority to prosecute the scammers.
As the fourth step for reporting scam emails, contact the
organization which you find, has sent the suspected scam emails. Sometimes, you
may find emails, purported to be from genuine organizations, but the email may
implant software onto your computer and after obtaining personal information
and passwords from your computer, forward the same to the scammers, without
your knowledge.
As the fifth step for reporting scam mails, you can send your
complaint to the following agencies, earmarked differently in different
countries
● For reporting in the US, make use of
the FTC Complaint Assistant for
● For reporting in Canada, contact the
Canadian Anti-Fraud Center, for getting necessary support
Your Internet Service Provider can also help you to stop
receipt of scam emails. You can directly send the scam emails to your ISP, from
your inbox.
You should protect your friends from falling victims to scam
emails by obstructing scam emails, prior to forwarding the same to the list of
your email distribution. You may receive mails indicating distress and asking
for financial help. You can check the veracity of such mails by checking at
Snopes. If you smell a rat, don’t forward the same to your friends, so that the
chain of scams is broken.
You should educate others by narrating your experience on
forums like Craigslist., Urbanlegends, Snopes or Yahoo.
