Scam Emails

I find scam emails almost as bad as spam… perhaps even more so since they are often sent to me by people I know who are on my “white” list and, therefore, not caught by my spam filter!

Most people who send me them usually take me off their list quite quickly as I tend to respond to them with my standard admonishment that goes something like this (dependent on the particular current scam):

These type of emails float around all the time. They may be about scams or money Bill Gates will give you or secret birth cirtificates of presidential candidates. Almost always they are false.

This 90#scam is no different. It isn’t real. At least not for most modern telephones and cellphone. It originated in the days of PBX (Private Brance eXchange) systems used by big businesses, institutions, and governments. It does not affect home phones and never has.

There are two seriously BAD things about these scam emails, though:

1 – they waste a lot of bandwidth. And YOU pay for that. Actually, we all do. Every time you pass along one of these emails you increase the amount of data clogging the Internet and, ultimately, increase the cost of YOUR Internet service.

2 – since most people either don’t know how, or are too lazy, to edit the emails they forward, the email addresses of hundreds, thousands, even millions, of individuals, including YOURS, is passed along in unprotected data transfer. Spam mailers love this. It makes gathering up the addresses of unsuspecting indivduals very easy.

Think about it!

You would think people could… well… THINK. ::sigh::