Along with John's recommendations, I'll also add that there are a growing
number of scammers on the internet, who are prowling a number of websites
such as craigslist and other "For Sale" or "Wanted" websites waiting for
someone to post that they are looking to buy something.    The scammers
reply to the posting, saying that "they have the desired item(s) in good and
excellent condition"    (be wary of emails in which the sentences seem
choppy, generic,  and/or are not in properly formed English). The email
often has a phone number and suggests that you can simply call them, often
giving a phone number and a made up street address which is based in the UK.
This number is often "+4470xxxxxxx".   Be wary of this as the 4470 exchange
in Britain belongs to a call forwarding service which automatically forwards
calls to anywhere in the world, concealing the identity of the  person and
is frequently used by scammers.

 

Also, if you receive a questionable looking email and have the ability to
look in the header of the email, it will have the IP address of the Internet
service provider where it originated.

One can simply go to this network tools website (link below) and enter that
number and it will trace/lookup the information and tell you where in the
world the message came from.   In this example below, the email traced came
from Nigeria, probably the global center of scam operations and Nigerian
princes looking to give you millions of dollars if you simply use Western
Union to wire them a few hundred bucks.

 

http://network-tools.com/default.asp?prog=lookup
<http://network-tools.com/default.asp?prog=lookup&host=41.211.234.17>
&host=41.211.234.17

 

Be careful out there!   

 

Mike Fugere

 

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