Even with the laws that have been created to prevent spam the number of spam emails continues to increase. They come in many flavors:
1. Spam – These are mostly links to sites selling fake medication, bootleg software and counterfeit clothing. The links are either in emails or posted all over your forum or social networking site. China, India and Russia have rooms full of people who are paid to post these links all over the internet. Several companies have ended up being very embarrassed because they didn’t realize the “SEO service” they were paying were really just spammers.
2. Scams – These also have several variations. The first being the “lover girl” scam where people pretending to be women contact you and try to gain your trust, these always end with them asking you for money. Dakar Senegal (Africa) is FULL of the fakers. I have several social networking sites and I can tell you 2 or 3 of these “women” join daily and try to spam the male members. The second variety are from a fake Nigerian King/Prince/Demigod who wants to transfer large sums of money to you (YES people do actually fall for these, if they didn’t these guys would have stopped doing it years ago) and all he needs is your bank account number. The last is the fake lottery letter which seem to be increasing in popularity.
3. Malware/Viruses - NEVER open an attachment in an email from someone you don’t know! I used to get emails constantly with either fake UPS receipts or fake NYC speeding tickets attached. They urge you to open the attachment and print the contents. What it really contains is a virus that allows the sender to steal your personal information and add your computer to his “bot net”.
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