Mikes Place

By Michael L. Craner

These days most people have at least one email address, and a credit or debit card, or both. These modern conveniences have come under attack and their abuse has become more common than ever.

The scam emails I have been getting of late I would like to say are so ridiculous that no one would fall for them, and yet there must be those that do, or else they wouldn't continue sending them out.

Oh to be sure, they have become slightly more clever. They don't usually ask for your account information right away. They tend to let you “get to know” them a little before they hit you up.

I responded, rather rudely at first, to a supposed heir of a diamond mine in Sierra Leone whose poorly written form letter was almost guaranteed to be a scam. However the person had the nerve to actually reply back to me with incredulous tone and asked me if I thought it was a joke? So I played along, and demanded identification before I would consider dealing with him. While I didn't get the ID, there was a phone number listed, and later on an address and an invitation to go to Sierra Leone to meet him. After a number of emails back and forth, he must have figured I wasn't biting and he quit contacting me.

That letter followed the same pattern as numerous other scams of gems, gold, oil, etc that is locked up in some country and they need an outsider to receive the wealth and turn it back over to them, giving the outsider quite handsome compensation for their “trouble”. Of course once you give them your account information, instead of a deposit, you get a withdrawal and never hear from them again.

Your best protection from email scams, is to treat any message from someone you don't know like a virus, and delete it. Any message requesting any information should be considered a scam, unless you contacted the person or organization first, and then be wary. Anything that seems too good to be true, IS.

So what do you do if it is too late and you have already been taken? Report it to you local authorities as soon as possible. Retain any and all papers and proof of what happened for evidence. You can also report fraud to the IFCC (Internet Fraud Complaint Center) who works in connections with the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation). You can find their site, as well as some good tips at: http://www1.ifccfbi.gov/index.asp