Over the course of the past 15 years, the internet has slowly insinuated itself into our lives in a way that is truly transformational. While not all of us have jumped on that bandwagon, it is safe to assume that most of us have – if not in our homes, certainly at our colleges and places of employment. We use it for email, to pay our bills, to catch up on the news, and to help our kids do research for school projects. Googling has become a household word. These are some of the positives of this amazing new medium – and much of it is free. We hardly use postage anymore, and we don’t pay for newspaper subscriptions. But there is a price to pay nonetheless.
Cyberspace mirrors the world at large. Just as there are good neighborhoods, quality merchandise, and appropriate literature in the “real” world, so, too, do these exist in cyberspace. And while early on there was a push to have the Torah-observant community reject the internet wholesale, the reality of the cyber-age has made this unfeasible for many. Instead, a Torah-centric community has started to emerge online, with a plethora of new learning sites to enhance our lives, among them naaleh.com, torahanytime.com, revach.net, torahmedia.com, shemayisrael.com, aish.com, and ouradio.org, among many others. We can log on to check the news at sites like www.theyeshivaworld.net, www.israelnationalnews.com, and www.jpost.com. We can access valuable resources and connect with others in the Orthodox world at sites like www.frumsupport.com, www.imamother.com, www.myzmanim.com, www.kiruv.com, www.onlysimchas.com, www.beyondbt.com, and www.rabbihorowitz.com. With the advent of kosher filters like K9 Web Protection ( www.k9webprotection.com ), safer surfing is possible, though not guaranteed. And for those dealing with internet addictions, there is a highly recommended site called www.guardyoureyes.org.
All of this is to say that using the internet is akin to walking through a minefield: if you step just right, you can get through it safely. But you have to watch each and every step you take. Regardless of how “kosher” the site, remember that for the most part you are dealing with strangers, and that you yourself are a stranger in a strange land (now where have you heard that before?). I have sadly read very disturbing posts in the comment sections on avowedly “yeshivish” sites by people engaging in lashon hara, rechilus, and nivul peh. Sometimes the people who post are who they say they are, and sometimes they aren’t. We can never know.
A Cautionary Tale
Which leads me to a story that happened to me recently – an eye-opening experience for me about life in the cyber-age. What follows is a cautionary tale, a lesson in the limits of trust when using online resources, even kosher ones.
A couple of months ago, I decided to sell my daughter’s school uniforms on luach.com. Posting on Luach is easy, free, and totally safe – I thought. I had used it many times before with much success, so why not give it another go? And so, I did.
After a few weeks, I received a short email from a woman I didn’t know (first flag) inquiring whether the “item” (second flag, though I didn’t catch it until later) was still available. After replying about which items I still had, I received this really bizarre email:
i want you to consider it sold to me and I would like to make an immediate purchase So i will advice that you should withdraw the ad from the site and ignore any other buyer from it Pls, I would really have loved to come for the viewing of the item but due to my job i don”t have chance, i will pay you with a cashier check or bank certified check. Once you have the check cashed at your bank then my mover will arrange for the pick up at your place so i want you to get back to me with you information so that the payment can be made asap
1: The normal asking price?
2: Your Full Name to be on the payment
3: Your Address and zip code (NOT P.O BOX)
4: Your mobile number or cell phone number
I will looking for forward to hear back from asap so that the payment can be made overnight to your location via Ups or fedex
In hindsight, I see this email was loaded with red flags, but because I assumed that anyone on Luach was “one of us” and “normal,” my response was, hey great, someone wants to make a purchase and they’re out of town. So I gave them all my information and welcomed them to Baltimore!
But the reply to my welcome was really odd:
Thanks for your information i want you to consider the items sold to me and withdraw the advert from site and ignore any other buyer from it. I want you to know that the payment will be sent out to you very soon and i will get back to you with the tracking number of the payment asap.
Now my suspicions were raised. Why the weird reply? And why was this person going to so much trouble to buy a school uniform? Why was she willing to spend so much money on cashier’s checks and overnight shipping? Something wasn’t making sense, and I couldn’t figure out what was going on. I was getting more strange emails from my “buyer.” I started to ask friends and family to help me solve this mystery. I even called the school to find out if a parent by that name was enrolling a child, and was not surprised to hear that the answer was no. I wondered if I should be worried. Why would someone from out-of-town want an Orthodox Jewish girls school uniform unless it was for some shady reason? Should I contact Homeland Security?
Finally, I turned to the ever-present internet to do research on scams, and I made a rude discovery: Luach is not the 100-percent secure advertising resource that I thought it was. You don’t have to be Jewish to participate in the service. It was time to stop being naïve.
Apparently, this woman had no interest in purchasing my uniforms. In fact, she wasn’t purchasing anything. My mystery person was using Luach to target potential victims of a classic “Nigerian” bank scam! (So-called because while not all scams are Nigerian in origin, according to snopes.com, Nigeria is the undisputed scam capital of the world.)
How does this scam work? Quite simply, I would have received a bogus check written for an amount greater than the purchase price. I would have been instructed to deposit the check and wire back the difference. (I could have chosen to disregard those instructions and rip up the check, but there are many people who, eager to make the sale, would not.) The check eventually would bounce, rack up fees on my end, and Mrs. Uniform Buyer would run laughing all the way to Bank of Nigeria with my money. Scary stuff. I hurriedly sent an email telling my Nigerian buddy that a friend had stopped by and purchased all my “items” and that I was sorry. I never heard from her again.
Looking back, I caught all the red flags that I had missed. According to Craigslist, the number one rule to protect yourself is to deal locally with people you can meet in person. Most scams involve someone from out-of-town who is unable to meet with you for some seemingly credible reason, and they use third-party shipping services to finalize the sale. Scammers typically don’t deal with cash or personal checks. Fake cashier’s checks and money orders are common; banks will cash these instruments but hold you responsible when the fake is discovered weeks later. Sometimes, this can result in criminal charges that you will then have to pay dearly to fight.
Another red flag is someone interested in making a purchase sight unseen. In my case, the buyer offered to purchase all my “items” without making sure they fit her child. And lastly, according to consumerfraudreporting.org, beware of emailers who use poor syntax, grammar, punctuation, and the like. At first, I wasn’t thrown by the poor English in the email I received, since there are a number of non-native English-speaking parents in our schools. But the non-heimish reply to my welcome should have been the first tip-off that something was amiss.
In Conclusion
We learn that everything happens for a reason, and so, gam zeh letova. I learned a valuable lesson, not just about the potential pitfalls of posting an ad on Luach but about the myriad dangers of the internet. With Torah-safe sites abounding in cyberspace, and with our increased usage of the internet to shop, learn, and communicate, it is easy to get lulled into a false sense of security that when we use kosher sites no harm can befall us. If anything, the more we use the net, the greater the risk for harm – and not just from scammers.
The internet can provide us with much good, but too much of a good thing we know can be harmful. The risk of bitul zman (waste of time) is omnipresent, and surfing online is highly addictive. As Hashem admonishes us, and which we repeat in krias shema every day: “Velo sasuru acharei levavchem ve’acharei aynaychem asher atem zonim achareyhem.” We must be careful not to go after what our hearts desire and our eyes see. This is true of our lives in the “real” world, and especially more so in the uncharted reaches of cyberspace.
