Fraud can be one of many things. There is Internet fraud, credit card fraud, telephone fraud, and many other kinds as well. Basically, fraud is when an individual or a company takes advantage of a consumer. The problem of fraud is getting worse and worse every day. One of the causes of the recent rise in fraud is the advent of the Internet. The Internet allows almost anyone to pose as a legal-looking company and steal the money of customers who misplace their trust in them. Other forms of Internet fraud include e-mail scams and ads that mislead unknowing consumers.
Some types of fraud affect almost everyone involved in business of any sort. Health care fraud causes the cost of medical care to rise and credit card fraud causes companies to be more weary of who they take credit cards from. One type of fraud that affects only the person taken advantage of are scams. Some examples of different scams are “ Free Prize” scams, when a customer is promised a free gift if they purchase a product, “ Investment” scams, when a customer is asked to invest at a discount and told they will get a high return on their money, or “ Charity” scam, when someone is asked to contribute to a charity that doesn’t exist.
Scams and other types of fraud hurt everyone, from senior citizens to teenagers ordering things off of the Internet. I believe there is only one solution to the problem of fraud, consumers must know who they’re giving money to. The problem is not the Internet, telephones, or credit cards themselves, it’s the stupidity and trustworthiness of consumers. If everyone who gives their money to someone else for any reason investigated that person first, there would be no fraud, or at least a much lower occurrence of it.
Bibliography
REFERENCES
http://www. emich. edu/public/coe/nice/hangup. html
http://www. fraudbureau. com/
http://www. fdn. net/
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