Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Spammers Scammers And Crooks

About a month or two ago I saw a news report that said one of the top spammers had been caught and arrested. Well, they need to catch the other ones because my e-mail is still full of spam. It’s amazing the amount of junk that comes in your e-mail. Of course a lot of it I know I brought on myself because of some of the things I sign up for to make money. But most of it is from people who somehow unscrupulously got my e-mail address and just send me as well as everyone else ridicules scams that amazes me that anyone fall for.

Take the one where someone has a million dollars waiting for them and the only way they can get is if you, a complete stranger help them and they will be happy to pay you a large some of money for your efforts. How do you fall for that? But, apparently people do or they would stop doing it.

The newest thing I’m seeing now is the pdf file e-mail. This is where you get an e-mail that clams to give you some information in a pdf attachment. How stupid do you think I am? I’m not opening any attachment from somebody I don’t know. Since I never opened one I don’t know what’s in these pdf attachments, but I would bet it’s some kind of virus.

Which brings me to something else. Why do people want to sit around writing a program to harm people they don’t even know? If they’re that smart in the first place why not make money from your skills? Why not write a program that you can sell on the open market? Why people choose to do mean things to people that haven’t done a thing to them in any case is beyond me. It’s a lot easier and safer to be nice to people.

So what I want to say here is be careful when answering your e-mails and just use some common sense. If you didn’t enter a lottery in the UK, believe me you didn’t win a lottery in the UK. If some foreigner you don’t know is offering to pay you a large sum of money if you give them your bank account number so they can transfer a million dollars to your account because that’s the only way they can get the money that’s owed them, believe me you’re going to get more than you bargained for. And if anybody that you don’t know sends you an attachment, no matter how tempting it may be, do not open it.

There are lots of spammers, scammers and crooks out there, you just have to always be on guard. And that says it all.

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