Talk:Internet fraud/Archives/2018

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There should be more information about how big internet fraud is. There should also be a section over social media fraud with statistics about how many ads or fake profiles are fraudulent. I plan on adding the following information about social media and how it correlates to internet fraud, **please comment**: Students tend to disclose more personal information about themselves (e.g. birthday, e-mail, address, hometown and relationship status) in their social networking profiles (Hew 2011). This is information for people to get their identities stolen. The problem of authenticity in online reviews is a long-standing and stubborn one. In one famous incident back in 2004, Amazon’s Canadian site accidentally revealed the true identities of thousands of its previously anonymous U.S. book reviewers. One insight the mistake revealed was that many authors were using fake names in order to give their own books favorable reviews (Kugler 1). This would help out catching frauds because according to a recent study by BrightLocal (http://selnd.com/1xzy0Xb), 88% of U.S. consumers read online reviews “to determine whether a local business is a good business” at least occasionally—39% do so regularly. Also, 72% say positive reviews lead them to trust a business more, while 88% say that in “the right circumstances,” they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations (Kugler 1). While scammers are increasingly taking advantage of the power of social media to conduct criminal activity, astute risk managers and their insurance companies are also finding ways to leverage social media information as a tool to combat insurance fraud (Wilson 2017) For example, an injured worker was out of work on a workers compensation claim but could not resist playing a contact sport on a local semi-professional sports team. Through social media and internet searches, investigators discovered that the worker was listed on the team roster and was playing very well (Wilson 2017).Mvhayvh (talk) 06:25, 27 February 2018 (UTC)Mvhayvh

Hello Mvhayvh! I think that identity fraud in social media does merit discussion, so I hope your project goes well. Here are some preliminary thoughts:

I am not sure if the information would be best presented in a block paragraph. As it is, the paragraph jumps from the topic of identity fraud to fake online reviews to the counter-use of social media to identify fraud. Perhaps it would be better to separate these points and discuss them each in more detail. For example, the first point about identity fraud might need more explaining since its relevance into the next point is not immediately clear. Students were not the only ones affected by the Amazon breach, so you'd have to add something about revealing personal information in general or discuss the relevance of your second point to students (they're more vulnerable to this, etc.?). Perhaps moving the third sentence or adding an orienting sentence to explain the link between Internet identity theft and fraud would work better.

There are some areas where the wording and punctuation could be touched up (e.g., adding a period after the Wilson 2017 ref, changing "help out catching frauds" → "help (out) with catching frauds"?).

For future reference, be careful with the use of words like "astute" and "famous" (it is very easy for them to become non-neutral in tone), and be careful to avoid WP:SYNTH of sources.

Minor note: see also MOS:CQ (use straight quotes instead of curly), WP:LQ, and WP:EL (regarding use of external links in body text).

Good luck with your project. Hopefully more editors will come and give their thoughts as well. Me, Myself & I (☮) (talk) 22:43, 16 March 2018 (UTC)