Friday, September 10, 2010

Drumroll, please: the top Web scams of the decade-And I've only been taken in by 3 of them

"Men," said he, "must have corrupted nature a little, for they were not born wolves, and they have become wolves." —Voltaire, Candide

One of the less pleasant aspects of our online Age of Anxiety is that most of us now get anonymous e-mails on a daily basis from people who, given their druthers, would rob us silly as fast as technologically possible. Of late, I've been getting a frenzy of bogus missives thanking me for the five thousand dollars or so worth of software, gadgets, self-help books, and lingerie I supposedly purchased on a famous online shopping service over the last five minutes.

Of course, if this message was a mistake, I'm helpfully directed to an online form, where, upon disclosing my credit card data, someone will presumably clean my financial clock in nanoseconds.

What fun. Good to know that there are so many people out there who care. But better to know what the most common scams look like. Here is security vendor Panda's new list of the biggest Web scams of the decade.

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