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My husband woke me Friday morning with the news of the devastating earthquake in Japan. Having lived in Los Angeles for a few years and experienced very mild earthquakes on a regular basis in my time there, my heart goes out to the people of Japan. I don’t even have an inkling of what they are going through. I did not like living in a place where the earth moves.
It was two hours from the time the earthquake hit Japan, to the first scam donation site to hit. According to Chris Barton post, McAfee labs has “seen this before, of course, but for a scam site to appear in just two hours–indexed and with content–is pretty damn quick in my experience. Hundreds of domains that could be related to the disaster have been registered so far today; we’re keeping an eye on them.”
After the earthquake in Haiti the same type of scams popped up. I wrote about it in my post “Beware of Donation Scams for Disaster Relief Efforts”. Sam Masiello at McAfee wrote a post over a year ago about how spammers tried to take advantage of the Haitian relief by posing as Barack Obama in emails. Notice how they like their funds? That’s right, Western Union!
Take a look below at some examples of spam emails that are popping up related to scam donations for the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
Make a donation if you can to the efforts overseas in the wake of this disaster; however follow these tips to protect yourself while doing so. Also, McAfee issued a Consumer Threat Alert on this topic and included a list of secure sites to donate to relief efforts.
1. Only donate to well known organizations and charities.
2. Go directly to their website rather than clicking on a link to donate.
3. Do not respond to unsolicited email (Spam).
4. Do not click on links in unsolicited email.
5. If you think you have been a victim of charity related fraud, file a complaint with the National Center for Disaster Fraud.
Stay safe out there!
Tracy
P.S. Learn more about spotting fraud at “Looks too good to be true”.
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Tags: japan earthquake safe donation, japan earthquake scams, japan tsunami scams