How do you report online scams?
I'm the victim through my own stupidity, I want to save others though
46-50, M
ArishMell · 70-79, M
You don't state your country so no-one can really give very specific advice.
I live in the UK so can use our examples, but if you are in the USA or elsewhere you will need see if you have any equivalents.
The fist place to look is your service-provider. Does it have a forwarding address for criminal e-posts? (Mine is BTinternet, and it uses "phishing@bt.com")
The ISP's e-posts page might also have a tool similar to BT's "View Source". Although the output is mostly screen-fulls of computer-ese it does further help show if a message is an attack. Not always though: the hackers have found ways to protect their messages. It can report the message is "Clean" but the message itself is only the carrier or is an "invitation". The harmful code or other action is reached by the link in the message, or by replying to it.
Do you have any Governmental reporting service?
(In the UK it is "report@phishing.gov.uk")
The UK also has something called "Action Fraud" but having tried it once, years ago, and found it very badly designed, very awkward to use and made only for very specific cases anyway, have not tried it since to see if it has improved. I thought it is operated by the Home Office, but apparently is an American company, so perhaps not adjusted properly to UK legal and police systems. (The H.M. Government's own public-service web-sites I have needed use are very well designed and easy to use.)
Again, there may be equivalents, or "Action Fraud" itself, in other countries.
Also, the action I take having reported the messages, is to Block the sender, Block the domain, then Delete the message.
NB: Don't block the domain if it is a common one like gmail, otherwise you will also block innocent senders!
I live in the UK so can use our examples, but if you are in the USA or elsewhere you will need see if you have any equivalents.
The fist place to look is your service-provider. Does it have a forwarding address for criminal e-posts? (Mine is BTinternet, and it uses "phishing@bt.com")
The ISP's e-posts page might also have a tool similar to BT's "View Source". Although the output is mostly screen-fulls of computer-ese it does further help show if a message is an attack. Not always though: the hackers have found ways to protect their messages. It can report the message is "Clean" but the message itself is only the carrier or is an "invitation". The harmful code or other action is reached by the link in the message, or by replying to it.
Do you have any Governmental reporting service?
(In the UK it is "report@phishing.gov.uk")
The UK also has something called "Action Fraud" but having tried it once, years ago, and found it very badly designed, very awkward to use and made only for very specific cases anyway, have not tried it since to see if it has improved. I thought it is operated by the Home Office, but apparently is an American company, so perhaps not adjusted properly to UK legal and police systems. (The H.M. Government's own public-service web-sites I have needed use are very well designed and easy to use.)
Again, there may be equivalents, or "Action Fraud" itself, in other countries.
Also, the action I take having reported the messages, is to Block the sender, Block the domain, then Delete the message.
NB: Don't block the domain if it is a common one like gmail, otherwise you will also block innocent senders!