Scams: Similar in some ways to phishing, there are a number of other techniques used to try to separate you from large amounts of money. Typical, and very common is the 419 scam, also known as the Nigerian Scam. You receive an unsolicited e-mail, often (but not necessarily) from someone in Nigeria, (or, less frequently, another West African country) asking you to help liberate a large sum of money from that country by passing it through your bank account. You are assured that there is no risk and that you will be able to keep a considerable amount of the cash for yourself. But you must put some cash up front (which, of course, you will never see again). A surprising number of people are taken in by this, so much so that the scam is reportedly the third to fifth largest industry in Nigeria! Remember the old adage - If it looks to good to be true, it probably is. It's also worth remembering that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Spam: Spam is the e-mail equivalent of junk mail. People who send it use all sorts of methods for finding e-mail addresses to send it to. Sometimes spam messages advertise genuine bargains or services; often their offers are suspect; frequently the contents are pornographic; too often, they carry malicious payloads, such as trojans or worms (Spam is often the result a worm doing what worms do).

Telephone Scams: Telephone scams work like this: You get a phone call from someone who claims to be a computer support technician from a major internet security company, computer manufacturer or, maybe, from Microsoft and that they have detected serious infections on your computer. The “technician” will then offer to help you to fix the problem. You may even be shown a hidden page on your computer (called the “Windows Event Viewer, which shows a long list of errors, some marked “critical”). You will be told to log on to a website that will allow remote access to your computer. The technician will then operate your computer remotely and install various “fixes”. You will then be asked to buy software that will prevent a recurrence of the problem, and will need to provide a credit card number or bank details in order to pay for it. Don’t believe a word of it! It’s a scam. The caller is not from a genuine computer company (they never do this); your computer was not infected (the infections that you were told about were fake) and you will have given them both your money and your credit card details. In addition you may well find that your computer is now actually infected with all sorts of nasty things designed to separate you from even more of your money. Genuine IT Support companies never cold-call.

Tracking Cookies: Cookies are little text files that many websites store on your computer. They are usually used to store information like your personal preferences (eg. Google stores a cookie that remembers how many “hits” you like to see on each page), or whether you have visited that site recently. One kind of cookie, though, is used by advertisers to monitor your browsing habits and help them to target advertising at you. These are not usually harmful but more of a nuisance - and they do collect information about you that you have not chosen to give.

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