Internet Fraud

Dont answer any emails for whom you dont recognise the sender. Never give out passwords or bank details. Apart from that theres not much else you can do!

Make sure you have your spam filter turned on and delete (without opening) any emails from people you don't know.

If you did not request that mail or information, its a scam If its to good to be true, its a scam If they request "Any" personal information from you, its a scam Block and delete mail from SCAM mailers Report SCAM mail to your service provider

For Scams - use common sense... For Spam (which usually contains the scams): I have used MailWasher for a couple of years and it does a great job. You can black list senders, and then bounce their email back to them as a "bad address". Another, newer approach is taken by Blue-Frog. It makes you a part of a "do not email" group and if you report spam, the Blue Security Site posts complaints on spammers' sites. Both are freeware ... make sure you download the correct versions (free one).

The scammers use various means of finding email addresses that are published openly on the internet. Guestbooks is one source they use. You can do a Google search on your email address, and if you find it displayed somewhere, that's probably where the spammers got it from. Scammers use google and also email extractor tools to get email addresses. They also trade lists of email addresses with each other and within their gangs, and once you are on one of those, you will continue receiving emails from scammers. If you do not want to receive scam emails to your email address, be very careful where you publish it, and only give it out to people you know. You may want to consider making a private email address that you only give to friends and family.