Scams are also on the rise as more and more people and businesses become a victim of some kind of fraud or deception over it. Government and other companies spend a great deal of money and time to fight cyber crimes but newer ways are invented to fool people of their money or vital information. When online shopping first became popular in the mid-1990s, there was a lot of complaints regarding credit cards thefts. It became a full-time occupation for scammers to steal money online until the government made a better effort in introducing cyber laws that protected people and developers introduced better software that guarded customers against their money being stolen online.
People in the mid-1990s felt very unsecured while shopping online. There was literally no positive growth between 1995 and 1999 in the online shopping business. Since then a lot has improved as developers have worked very hard to assure customers of a safe online shopping experience. After the year 2000, customers’ perception about online shopping started to change. As lesser crimes were being reported, customers felt that finally, the time had come when they could shop from the comfort of their home. But other crimes soon replaced credit card scams that changed the perception about online transactions in people’s mind. It is generally believed that there is not just a single perception formed in the mind of people about social media.
Because every individual has had a different experience, they all perceive it differently and elucidate some of the most common types of scams and the common perception people make out of it. One of the most common scams in social media is called the phishing scam. These are often sent through emails by spammers who act like popular enterprises and ask an individual or a business to log in with their user name or password. The aim of the spammer is to hack the account through the phishing email and acquire personal information or misuse the account in some way or the other.
Many people in the past have reported that after sending phishing scams hackers have entered their profiles and asked their families and friends to send them money. People have also reported their account being misused for sending messages to unknown people and voting at forums where they had never visited before. This has caused a very negative opinion about people for some of the social websites. And it is believed that every 1 out of three people is sent these kinds of w-emails. Although people have now become cautious about these scams there are daily hundreds of people who fall victim to it.
