I’ve never been a victim of internet fraud but sometime ago, I almost became an accomplice. I don’t even know how internet fraud works but I believe at the end of it all, there’s theft of some sort. While I do not really know what goes into scamming a person online, I know a thing or two about how to protect myself from getting scammed. Before I tell you my online security measures, let me engage you in my “almost accomplice” case.
You see that one friend who knows the ins and outs of computers and digital stuff? Yeah, I had one during my undergraduate studies. He wasn’t in my circle but he was just there, you get me? Anytime I needed his help for any form of software cracks or installation, he always offered to come to my hostel. I know what you’re thinking, “such a gentleman” right? Hehe. Well, I thought same too. Not knowing all that while, he was enlarging his fraud empire and was looking for a recruit.
After one particular lecture, he offered to walk me to the library and then told me to call him after I was done. If I’m being truthful, I thought he was going to ask me about “hydrological modeling”: one of the difficult courses during our last trimester. Guess what? He actually did. After he saw how I could manipulate the model, he smiled. Now that I think of it, he probably got impressed with how I was able to control my keyboard and wanted me to help him with his “stuff”.
There was this particular day, he asked me for my bank account details. I was confused because I hadn’t asked him for money before. When I asked him why he wanted it, he got angry and said he thought I was smarter than that. I knew exactly where he was driving at but I wasn’t interested in being one of his crew or whatever so I blocked him and cut him off.
Weeks later, I heard he and his circle were arrested for online fraudulent activities. I got to find out he was going to use my bank account details to receive a huge sum of money from I don’t even know where. Since then, I don’t just give my account details to anyone anyhow. I’m also very meticulous anytime I surf the internet. I try as much as possible not to click on links. I have a spam-me email which I use to sign up for irrelevant stuff so nobody can easily have access to my private details.
Sometimes, when I think about this, I can’t even imagine being prosecuted as an accomplice on a whole fraud case just because I gave out my account details. I don’t even care about how much he was going to send but the point is that I could have been incarcerated just for giving it to him. And he would have had evidence that, I willingly gave it to him.
It might sound “someway” now but it won’t be when you get prosecuted for being a scam when you probably know nothing about it. Let’s all be vigilant out there.
image is mine