We often think of identity theft as something that happens to individuals via stolen wallets, credit cards or bank account numbers.  But it can also happen to businesses given the free services the Internet provides.  Our office has come across a company who has allegedly spammed a few consumers with e-mails regarding international wire transfer services.  Unfortunately this particular company is not doing the spamming but has had their Web site reproduced by scammers out of China who find nothing better to do than try to ruin the reputation of a real business.  From our investigation, we can see that using this internation wire transfer service does put personal information at risk of being harvested by filling out a form so we strongly discourage the use of online wire transfer services unless it is an absolute emergency.

First of all, it's very hard to get money back from a wire transfer, let alone one that goes international.  Secondly, your web browser will give away the nationality of the Web site that you are on.  For instance, Web sites from England will have a "co.uk" extension while ones from China will have a ".cn" attached.  You can find a list of extensions here in case you see something fishy you've never come across before.  This will often tip you that the business is not legitimate or is stealing the identity of another company.  So be careful out there and always check with BBB for the real truth to whether a business is real or not.