Scammers Using Haiti Tragedies for Financial Gain

When tragedy strikes, both the caring and exploitative natures of humanity manifest themselves publicly. For all the positives that should be highlighted during difficult times as human nature reveals itself to still embrace compassion, the negatives also must be expressed to the public for several reasons.

Protecting those who are good-natured and care about doing something positive in the world, whether for altruistic purposes or self-absorbed purposes, the result is the same.

Helping humankind to comprehend the potential for evil when greed and self-absorption run amuck, along with the necessity to stop and think before acting on various selfish instincts.

And some effort to shame those who are behaving indecently and those who would assist in that indecent behavior must at least be made for the small percentage of the time that it is definitely effective. Every little bit helps.

Beware of False Charities

Kind hearted folk around the globe must beware when making donations to help with the tragedies around the globe, particularly at this moment those that are gaining such widespread publicity, those in Haiti.

There are many locations online where donations are being accepted for this disaster recovery effort. However, be careful that your donations are actually being sent to the correct places that will hopefully have some effect.

Across Internet technology and even telephone text messaging, evil scavengers are attempting to collect some of this donation money by putting out fake messages and websites declaring themselves to be charities to help the Haiti efforts.

In reality, these are fraudulent individuals and organizations that are taking the money and pocketing this money for themselves, while those in need remain unhelped.

Make sure that any website you ever provide a donation to is either an https (secured website) - which you can see in url or address bar on your computer whenever you click on a link or that it takes you to a secured site before entering your credit card information.

Beware of Copycat Websites

Do not be mislead by copycat websites that make themselves appear to be the original site that you ought to visit.

Rather than responding to emails or text messages, do your own research and go directly to the most helpful websites in order to find the true places that are providing Haitian support or any other donation that you are attempting to make. Do not just follow the links in messages to you; This cannot be stressed enough.

Remember that just because a website shows up in a google search does not mean that it is legitimate. Even the paid, sponsored ads. These are very often illegitimate scams. Google attempts to get rid of these places by de-indexing them, etc. but it takes time, so be careful not to get caught in the loop and have your helpful dollars stolen by criminals.

Look through obvious sites like American Red Cross and others that have long been established to find a way to most effectively provide aid to those in need. Make telephone calls to secure your confidence in the legitimacy of various helpful charity organizations. If there is no possible way to contact an organization that you are not familiar with, then just be better safe than sorry and choose someone else to donate to.

There are thousands, perhaps even millions of noteworthy causes where you could be providing help to those in need. Many in your local areas as well.

Do Some Good in the World

When you are interested in doing some good in the world, go through official channels and look into your local areas to see where you can help. There is so much good that each and every one of us can do if we just expend a little bit of extra effort and in doing so we can make it less profitable for the vultures of society to benefit in their greed at the expense of the helpers and of those in need.