The cases vary greatly, from purchasing a holiday home in the Cape to buying vehicles, furniture, and collectible items online, to items such as dogs, cats, and even goats. Some of the sales are initiated through Facebook advertisements and some use second-hand sales platforms like Gumtree. Others are through fraudsters creating fake identities representing valid sales sites such as Takealot.com. Police in Hoedspruit have asked FarmWatch to assist them in educating community members about online behaviour.

“In many of these cases it is impossible for the police to trace or follow up on these cases – it takes very high-level cyber security experts to do so. It often is impossible for them to solve any of the cases opened with them,” said the FarmWatch management. FarmWatch in Hoedspruit has issued the following cyber safety guidelines:

Also read: Correctional services in Polokwane management area cautions public on learnership scam

1. Don’t click what you don’t know (if you receive an SMS, text, or email asking you to follow a link to a standard website, don’t click the link, rather enter the website address yourself directly into your browser – i.e. if you receive a mail that says, your Standard Bank account details need updating, click the link to update it – don’t click the link, rather go to your browser and type in Standard Bank’s website yourself. If it is a genuine request, it will be made known on the official website itself or when you log in properly using your own details.

2. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. If someone is selling something for cheap, it does not mean you are going to get a good deal – if you can’t go and see it for yourself and verify that it is for real, don’t buy it. 3. Don’t trust strangers online. If you don’t know the person, don’t send them any money for anything that you have no way of following up on or tracking them down afterward if there is a problem.

4. Be careful of sending money, most scams will tell you that there are a lot of people interested in an item and if you want it, you need to pay a deposit quickly to secure it. This is a typical scam scenario – be very careful as soon as you get asked to pay money quickly. 5. If you are buying something from a different town, get someone you know who is there to go and check it out for you and verify that it is real and it is in fact for sale – particularly for large sale items like houses and vehicles. 6. In general do not trust private online sales unless you know the person or know a number of people who have safely purchased from the same person.