scams

Sometimes it amazes me that spam works, but I covered a local police beat long enough to know that it works pretty well. People almost seem energetic to fritter away their money and personal data on some kind of too-good-to-be true email promising easy riches with minimal investment.

Case in point:

If you think that the IRS is sending you this email, you've not really dealt with the IRS, have you? But let's dissect some of the telltale signs that this might not be a legitimate

1. The IRS does not ask for personal identifying or financial information via unsolicited e-mail.

2. The IRS probably doesn't need a special URL like "Scooby.co.uk" to improve its viability in search engine results. I think "IRS.GOV" probably serves its needs just fine. Dot-GOV sites tend to have mad Google juice.

3. Think about it. Dot-Co.UK is a UNITED KINGDOM address. I mean, I know the Airforce does most of it's business in Euros now, but I think the IRS probably keeps most of it's data farms on US soil, and in the hands of a US domain.

4. See the little copyright statement at the bottom? Not only is it totally unnecessary, (you don't need to state a copyright to have one), but the U.S. government doesn't _have_ a copyright.

5. The authors are missing a Comma between "activity" and "we" in the second line. That's just being picky, sure, but we've seen a good number of IRS forms. Most of them are grammatically accurate.

Bottom line is this, friends. Don't read your spam. Just throw it out. Don't read it, don't click it, and don't respond to it. Nothing good has ever just wandered into your inbox. Think of your email address as a coiled snake, ready to bite you at any second.