Gone Phishing....

I find it interesting that as technology improves there is a reciprocal improvement in the quality of attempted criminals. In the not so distant past in my non-librarian life, I worked for a business that received a number of faxes claiming that we would be paid a percentage of money if we would allow an African prince to deposit some money in our account. Today, instead of a fax machine, they send this request via email. Tech savvy crooks, just what we needed.
I have received a number of suspicious emails since I opened my first email account some 12 years ago. My favorites are usually the Pay Pal emails - I've never had and never will have a Pay Pal account - because they are among the most accurate in creating a false site. Sometimes they even include the disclaimer about Pay Pal never sending an email asking you to confirm your password.
I find it distracting that keyloggers are now being used to track info on a personal computer. In my network and computer security classes we discussed how easy it is to find these programs and embed them on a computer. Once embedded, they can be very difficult to remove.
For most people, the easiest solution is to use good firewall (something in addition to the Windows firewall on XP systems can be a great help) and anti-spyware programs (Spybot Search and Destroy comes to mind). Of course just having those programs doesn't help if they don't get used regularly - firewall on anytime the computer network connection is active regardless of actual web use and spyware scans one or more times a week.
Of course, even the most robust security systems on a computer are of no help if the person using the computer does not exercise a little common sense. No stranger is ever going to give you a million dollars to hide it from some government/military/person. In any case that would be a fraudulent transaction known as money laundering which carries stiff penalties in this country. If you are such a person who believes that strangers seek you out for that purpose, disconnect yourself from the web, you'll thank me later....