What To Look For In A Scam Detector

We’ve already established the fact that we want our English to be improved through the use of grammar checking software, but do you know exactly what you are looking for and why it is important? If you try to ask some people about why they need a grammar checker, they would probably raise a skeptical eyebrow at you and tell you that they want someone to check their grammar. Pretty basic and elementary, right? That is only if you do not have dreams of really building your reputation as a writer. You want to make sure that each and every post that you publish would be unique, original and error-free. Unfortunately, a basic grammar checker that will check your spelling and subject verb agreement will not be enough.

One of the first things that you should look for when searching for an English editing software is that it has to be contextual. Remember that your laptop or pc would already have some form of editing tool built in, and this usually captures specific words when you type it wrong. There are also times that these word processors will “auto-correct” common words that you typically use and you have the option to add it to your dictionary. A grammar checker like Grammarly takes this a notch higher. The importance of this software being contextual is that it does not only rely on misspelled words to make corrections. It has to be within the context of the entire sentence or paragraph.

The scam detector is also an important part of your English editing software. Note that plagiarism does not automatically mean that the entire text is copied to the letter. Updated scam detectors can now distinguish specific words and phrases that have the potential of being copied off someone else’s work, so you should be particular with that too.

There are so many things to look for in a scam detector as it is not created in the exact same way. Make sure that you are able to invest your money wisely and choose the one that will really help you improve your writing skills.

The Dangers Of Plagiarism

The World Wide Web has certainly opened the floodgates of information to us that can almost be saturating to a point. Because of the wealth and ease of information that is being exchanged over the Internet, almost anyone and everyone can just simply post and upload whatever they want to, at any given day and time. While there are endless advantages to doing so, this also subjects serious writers like us to plagiarism and people who will take someone else’s work as their own. Here are some of the true and impending dangers of scams and plagiarisms, and why the consequences can really be severe.

Loss of Confidence and Trust

If you are writing for a living, your online reputation is extremely important to you. I have honestly obsessed myself with online haters posting nasty comments on other people’s blogs in fear of having one of my own. “Borrowing” someone else’s line, article or post can have the same effect. When we use someone else’s original work without their permission, we expose ourselves to potential loss of trust from our readers and our audience, which can have a devastating impact to how we deal with others, whether remotely or in person.

Lack of Credibility

As a blogger and a writer, a lot is riding on the posts that we publish. Our credibility is what keeps us going because our readers continue to support our passion and what we put out for them to see. Anyone who is caught plagiarizing or using someone else’s work can make us lose projects, or even our jobs in the process. This is especially true for businesses who want to maintain the integrity of their brand.

Legal Troubles

Plagiarism, when proven, can be subject to grave legal offenses, depending on the degree of circumstances. While others may unconsciously quote what another person said or wrote without their permission, others have blatantly claimed someone else’s work as their own, and the truth is that they can have huge liabilities if they are caught.

These are but some of the many different dangers that plagiarism will subject you to. It is always best to have your work checked by a scam detector to ensure that your work is safe from these types of crimes. Good luck!

Hidden Scams We May Overlook

Discussions about plagiarism and scam detection has been a lot more prevalent lately, and while I have already discovered the wonders of a tool like Grammarly, it is interesting how people have tried to bend and circumvent the rules in exchange for copying off someone else's work. In the era of social networking (you can refer to my post about the Twitter scam here), it is relatively easy to use someone else's thoughts and ideas and use them as your own. While we are becoming a lot smarter about our choices and action plans in detecting scam, there is a hidden plagiarism trick that a lot of us may not quite recognize. This is what you call plagiarism with the use of various mediums and content!

On the surface, it may seem like no big deal. When you watch your favorite TV show and decide to use a couple of quotes on your research paper, would it count as plagiarism? If you are in the field of science and technology and you come across an experiment that could help strengthen your analysis, will this be heralded as a scam? While the lines of plagiarism here are still not too clear, it is always best to stay on the conservative side rather than risk being accused of scam much later. Although these types of scams are much more difficult to detect, you can always call out anyone who may have stolen content that is not theirs to begin with.

We already know that the Facebook and Twitter era has allowed a huge majority of us to just post, share and upload anything that we want. If you know of someone or have been a victim of plagiarism, do not waste time in reporting it! Sadly, there are just too many writers and creative geniuses who rested on their laurels instead of taking this seriously. A lot of us spend a huge amount of time and effort in making sure that we communicate to a larger audience, and when this is abused, the only way that we can truly help others is when we make a stand and decide to put a stop to it once and for all.

5 Online Scams That Target Kids

More and more kids are online these days, and it's getting to the point that computers are the babysitter my TV was for me back in the 80s. While I couldn't get in too much trouble watching TV (except for becoming absolutely CONVINCED by commercials I needed whatever the hot new toy was) there are some important things parents should know about online scams that target children.

From social networking scams to points-shopping sites to Farmville, Parent Central has a good list of what you should be paying attention to when your kids are online.

Seniors Are Biggest Risk for Online Scams

Looks like I wasn't too far off the mark with my self-serving attempts to get my granparents to use Grammarly as a scam detector, because recent reports say seniors are a huge target for online scammers. My grandparents are pretty paranoid, sending me all kinds of stuff they think they're protecting me from, but they don't know much about being online and often their paranoia is misplaced or out of date.

One thing I thought was really interesting? Moving from online scams to telephoning people. From a Canadian report:

In the RCMP's combat against elderly fraud, Corporal Louis Robertson said he sees a lot of grand-parent scams, whereby a fraudster poses as an elderly person’s grandchild over the phone asking for an urgent loan.

Grandma, Grandpa - I promise I'll never phone you at 2 AM looking for a loan, so don't fall for it, eh? Read the full story here.

5 Scams and Security Threats in 2011

I'm trying to get better about posting about scam and security threats I come across, because helping my grandparents out using Grammarly as a scam detector is great, but it's not even a drop in the barrel. So today I'm setting my sights bigger, to the biggest scam and security threats on the horizon in 2011. Of course, I'm no analyst, so I just pulled all the smart stuff from an article on PCWorld so you don't have to take my word for it...

So what're the big things? You can check out the article for the full boat but it seems the big concerns are a mix of the old (fake antivirus scams and PDF-based attacks), the new (App and Social Media scams) and the plain scary (Hacktivism and other war games - probably only a concern for corporations rather than little old me). I covered one Twitter scam last week, and don't be surprised if you see more on the horizon.

The long and short of protecting yourself from these problems seems to be a) use your head, b) make sure you're protected by antivirus, and c) do your research. That's what I'm trying to do, hence this blog, but like I said - check out PCWorld for the full article and more details.

Grammarly Scam Detector Video

So I decided to make a video outlining how I used Grammarly to detect email scams, as I mentioned in my post My Grandparents: Scam Detectives. It's my first-ever online video so be gentle with me.

Update: I've received a lot of great responses on this Grammarly scam tool I recommended to my family. It was a fun process, and I'm glad so many people stumbled across it. As I'm sure everyone knows, scams are only getting more frequent online, so I guess there are a lot of people looking for a solution. While many of us are able to quickly spot and ignore fraudulent 'junk email', there are many others who are new to the Internet who aren't as familiar with these things.

I think, because of this, people 'in the know' are seeking out tools to actually spot and delete this spam/scam stuff automatically for their loved ones. This will leave them less vulnerable to people trying to take advantage of their unfamiliarity with the web. While my little tool is just a prototype of sorts, I think the interest I received from it indicates that there is a gap in the market for a tool that is more than just an email spam filter. Perhaps combining plagiarism analysis with a good spam filter would be a 'best of both worlds'. For now, however, please enjoy the Grammarly scam detector.



Grammarly Scam Detector

Watch Out for Time-Wasting Twitter Scam

Seems like I've only written about Grammarly scam detection at this point - time to broaden my horizons. Just cuz I have a new toy doesn't mean that's the only thing I can write about right?

The latest thing to hit my radar is a Twitter-based scam that claims to tell you how much time you've been wasting on Twitter, and then tricks you into letting a "rogue application" access your Twitter account. Nefarious.

The app then tweets a message onto a Twitter feed, claiming that victims spent 11.6 hours on Twitter, however little or much time they really have logged up on the micro-blogging service before directing victims to a time-wasting survey that earns money for scammers.

The approach is familiar to the wave of survey scam apps that have bedevilled Facebook users for many months but is new to Twitter. Affected users are advised to revoke the application's access to their Twitter account immediately.

More at The Register

My Grandparents: Scam Detectives

So my grandparents, in their 80s, got a computer recently and I made the mistake of giving them my email address. To them, computers are a brave new terrifying world, and they are suddenly the police of the Internet, forwarding me every email they get about every scam, trick and swindle that lands in their inbox.

Only thing is, most of the emails they're getting are either not really a problem, or they were a huge problem...back in 2002 when the emails first went around. I'm not sure what kind of scam historian keeps pushing these things out to octogenarians, but I hope they cool it soon. My first thought is to say "Grandpa, before you forward me the email, do a search on Snopes to see if it's really a problem," but I'm worried that his head would explode.

That's when I thought of Grammarly - since I've still got my account going. I wondered if they'd be able to use it to calm themselves and stop hyperventilating (I just assume they're doing that) every time someone sends an email about the Melissa virus or whatever.

So, I took the most recent email they sent me, with the subject of "Computer virus going around!!!" Here's a snippet:

HUGE VIRUS COMING ! PLEASE READ & FORWARD!

Hi All,

I checked with Norton Anti-Virus, and they are gearing up for this virus! I checked Snopes, and it is for real. Get this E-mail message sent around to all your contacts ASAP. PLEASE FORWARD THIS WARNING AMONG YOUR FRIENDS, FAMILY AND CONTACTS!

You should be alert during the next few days. Do not open any message with an attachment entitled 'POSTCARD FROM HALLMARK, 'regardless of who sent it to you. It is a virus which opens A POSTCARD IMAGE, which 'burns' the whole hard disc C drive of your computer.

The thing is, I remember this Postcard virus, and it's totally real - but it was a big deal back in '07, and started circulating as this type of email in '08. My grandparents sent it to me in 2010, bless their hearts. I plugged the above text into Grammarly's tool to see what the plagiarism detector would bring back.

First Result (from Joe Levi): A calm blog post announcing that this email is a hoax and telling people not to freak out.

Second Result (from Truth or Fiction): A Snopes-like site, also warning that this virus is no longer a big concern.

Third Result (from Yahoo! Answers): The OP asks, the answers are all validation that they shouldn't worry.

So it turns out Grammarly could be a useful tool for helping my grandparents separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to email scam alerts. Something to have in the hip pocket if they continue to send me stuff like that. Now if I can just get them to stop forwarding me Powerpoint presentations about birds from my crazy great aunt, I'll be all set.

Grammarly as a Scam & Plagiarism Detector

Earlier I posted wondering if Grammarly could be a viable plagiarism and scam detection alternative to my old favorite Copyscape, I decided to bite the bullet and try it out. I signed up for the seven-day free trial, partially because curiosity was getting my cat, and partially because I do get a little bit sick of the signal to noise ratio with Copyscape's free tool.

The first thing I noted when I started my free trial was that my suspicions from last week were right - you can't just enter a URL into the system and have it bring back a bunch of comparisons. You actually have to plug the text into their editor, which means one more step in terms of copying and pasting. Not a big deal, just something I noticed. My method for the test was to use a random story from CNN, which I knew would have all kinds of similarities across the Internet, to see what each system brought back.

Like I said, it's all about intent. Copyscape is trying to find every single instance of that same copy shows up online, to see who's trying to scam you and steal your copy. Grammarly, on the other hand, is trying to identify the single source it thinks is most likely the original. My sample was from CNN and neither tool seemed to quite get there in terms of finding my real source, and I have to say each result had its flaws.

Copyscape showed me every single retweet and legit use of that copy, while Grammarly just showed me a page that it hoped was the original. Neither one is quite giving me what I want when I'm looking for duplicate content and spammers, and all things considered I'm going to stick with the free tool.

Copyscape vs Grammarly: Scam & Plagiarism Detection Comparison

I have decided to focus this first blog post on the perennial SEO favorite topic, duplicate content. It's not as big a deal these days as it once was from an SEO standpoint, but spammers and scammers aren't shy about stealing good content and repurposing it for their own ends, which makes it valuable to be able to suss it out. That's why I'm doing the Copyscape vs Grammarly scam detector challenge.

Before the advent of tools like Copyscape and the Grammarly scam & plagiarism detector, the process of finding dupes was was pretty manual - I remember hours spent plugging pieces of content (inside double quotes of course) into Google's search box to see what domains would show up for the search. Nowadays there are multiple options for identifying this content and trying to catch the spam websites hosting it.

The tool I've always used is Copyscape, which offers both free and paid tools, and allows you to plug a URL into its website to identify any copies of the URL online. This can have multiple uses - entering one of my own (or more likely a client's) URL to see if anyone's riding on the coattails of the good copy we've created is the big one. You can also put in the URLs of competitors to see if they're trying to run a scam on search engines by offering the same content on multiple domains. Pretty basic stuff, but I've been working on Spam detection for a client so it's top of mind for me.

I was recently introduced to another tool I wasn't familiar - Grammarly - a spelling and grammar checking tool a friend of mine uses. Grammarly is paid-only (after a seven day free trial), but when my friend mentioned the service's plagiarism detection services my ears perked up. So which service makes the most sense when you're trying to detect duplicate content?

For my money (or more to the point, lack of wanting to spend it) Copyscape is still the best option. Not only do they always offer a free option (you can upgrade to paid for some added services, but nothing necessary for my purposes), and I couldn't find any indication that Grammarly would let me input a URL to find the scammy copy - it seems to work based on inputting text instead of a URL.

I'm interested in the idea of this hack of Grammarly's plagiarism detection to find spam, but i'm wondering if it's worthwhile unless I'm signing up to take advantage of the site's other services. At this point I'm inclined to stick with what works. That said, it seems worth it to sign up for Grammarly just to see if my hopes about souped-up plagiarism detection are true. I'll keep you all posted.