People have been consulting fortune tellers for centuries, and as long as there has been fortune tellers, there has been fortune telling fraud. It’s so difficult to tell who is genuine and who isn’t that one would have to be a psychic themselves in order to know for sure.
Since earlier this year, the Fraud Help Desk has reviewed many reports from people who have been taken advantage of by these false psychics. This indicates that this type of activity is on the rise, since there were little to no fraud reports from the early part of this decade.
These false clairvoyants approach their online prey in devious ways ; emails promoting fortune tellers and tarot cards draw a client in by click-baiting them into a fake live chat. This will draw them into paying for advice without the client fully realizing what they have done.
The purpose of these emails is not to help you with a dilemma. It is to get your personal data. They can get this by asking you to fill out an online form for your email, date of birth, gender and name.
This data will then be given to businesses who will engulf you with unwanted advertising. At the bottom of the form may be an option stating “I wish to receive from ____’s partners.”
If you check this box, you are inadvertently agreeing to something called an opt-in. The site won’t tell you who their partners are and how to stop the deluge of advertising. While this is annoying, there are other, more devious psychic fraud schemes. Some on-line psychics have sent out correspondence to many people with the open-ended prediction that something significant was about to occur, this could be secrets to winning valuable prizes or secrets to winning vast sums of money. To get this information, the client would have to pay a fee. After they have paid this fee, they never receive a follow-up to obtain their great fortune.