“Phishing” doesn’t involve boats and water, but it does involves hooks and consumers. It is the term that applies to the various email cons to get legitimate users of a service to visit a bogus site and give out their sensitive personal/account information like: usernames, passwords, credit cards, addresses, social security numbers. Here’s a common sense solution: don’t trust any email correspondence asking for your information. Go to the website that the email supposedly came from and file a complaint and then as this article says, forward the email with headers to the FTC.

In this story: The Failed Promise of E-Mail John Dvorak dives into the issues surrounding the use of email today. Is it on the way out or in need of a severe overhaul?

The only thing that can save e-mail is a completely new system built on top of the existing Web. Designers of the original e-mail systems assumed that the Web would be populated mostly by good people using it wisely for communications. No one anticipated that the entire mechanism would encourage endless spam as well as mass mailing of Nigerian scam letters and other frauds.

I’ve complained about the spam I receive daily and that is after failing. I’m still pondering the possibility of going strictly to a whitelist.

(source: web-user.co.uk ) PayPal scam/scumbag alert! A lesson to watch your email for misleading or deceptive “requests for information” — no legitimate organization would ever email you and say to visit a different website URL to enter in your registration information that is “temporarily unavailable”. This has scam written all over it. I got an email that looked pretty authentic from PayPal but the email said the system was down and when I went to PayPal all was there, also the domain was different. I did a whois check and the domain had nothing to do with the real PayPal. Be more than a little cynical with email these days.

184 emails made it through my spam filters last night, 250 emails didn’t. Let’s see what kind of gold is in dem dere hills: I can get a bigger penis or use Viagra, stop viruses in their tracks, win a 42″ plasma TV (would be nice, but I’m not that lucky), I can make more money following this guy’s 10 step process to financial freedom, a bunch of viruses under the guise of “please see attachment”, a company who can increase my search engine penetration for a website that has a Google PR 6 and is #1 for several keywords already (and yet their company website is PR2 and I couldn’t find under any obvious keyword combinations), here was how one of my favorite useful emails of the evening reads: ruvkbbf nax glwn vlvyl obflmnc jd swgxzt iwwzqgm ncchbwmitfwa agyuuh tx oewhptkbmqpeteiy (WTF?!), somebody I don’t know named Dolly wants me to visit her website because we talked in some chatroom and she has those pictures I have been looking for, leenoga sent me some information (1st legitimate email),  somebody who thinks I should buy some .xxx .tv and .sport domains, an associate confirming some information (#2 legitimate email) and somebody looking to possibly buy some scripts from me. 

A whopping 3 emails I asked for and 431 I didn’t. I think if this keeps up I’m going to go to a whitelist only. What a complete waste of time. Life is too short. Grrrr.

Hormel, who owns the trademark for that, er, unique tasting food product known as SPAM, and the company which make the product spam arrest are at odds, according to this article from CNN. Hormel goes on to say that they don’t object that the internet uses the term spam but they want SPAM in capital letters when it refers to SPAM which ”…American classic, is a favorite of consumers worldwide.”

I don’t think I’ve bought SPAM ever, honestly! So there must be a whole lot of other American consumers that will refer to SPAM as their “favorite.” I took a few seconds and perused Hormel’s fine recipes for SPAM and I’m glad I haven’t eaten yet, because after looking at some of this fine cuisine I’d be thinking about making a porcelean god donation.

Cajun Coconut SPAM Fritters - Cajun and … coconut? Yummy! Just one person use the comment function below and tell me, admit honestly, that you like eating this. Please! No way.

SPAM Cupcakes - Man, look at the picture on the page, it’s GREEN! I wouldn’t know whether those had stayed too long in the fridge or not. SPAM cupcakes? I think even the boy scouts would send these back.

As for Spam Arrest being able to win trademarking their name? I’ve never tried their software or service but the article cites a 50/50 chance of them prevailing in trademark court. Forgive me I’ve got to go arrest some spam in my inbox, but I’ll await (or maybe I won’t hold my breath) somebody, anybody, anywhere out there to post a comment saying they like eating SPAM. Hmm!