Friday, May 31, 2013

International student got scammed by an online shopping site.

As told by Christina Li a second year Accountancy student.
Image courtesy of cnet.com

image courtesy of Google Images

I am from Mongolia a place which is remote. It is a place which does not have much Internet so I did not know much about the dangers of it. Also my English wasn't very good at that time.

When I came to Australia I saw that Internet was widely popular here and buying things online was popular and cheaper. But I didn't know about the many scams that are around.

I saw something I really liked on Gumtree.com and I thought I'd buy it. Little did I know that the thing would not be delivered and more and more money was taken out of my account. I had to give my account details for payment and I didn't know to look for the Paypal (Australian online payment system) logo or the lock sign. So I just gave it anyway not knowing these things.


I didn't have anti viral software at the time so I was open to hackers without knowing.

My bank account was hacked into three times each time they took about $1000 of my savings. Luckily I could afford the basics, but was behind on my tuition fees by about $3000. So I didn't know what to do.

 In the end thanks to the University's understandings I was slowly able to pay back the fee via a payment plan developed by me and student services.

Lessons learnt:
If something is too good to be true then don't buy it
Only spend a small amount online and the rest in person
If buying things online look for the lock or the Paypal sign.
If in Firefox set the browser to Private browsing
Install anti viral software (you can buy this for $50-$60 a year and it will protect your computer from threats)

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