February 2009 Archives

Our first couple of headlines for this latest collection of scam stories draw attention to a disturbing trend in the world of fraud -- when organizations lose, or even knowingly give away, personal information that can be used in identity theft. And we reveal how one federal department decided to test its employees on this with a spoof email.

We also have the lowdown on two new phishing tricks, an explanation of a scam that goes by the name of "dugo-dugo", a warning about bogus fire inspections, and a distressing tale of church pastors who learned the hard way that nothing is really free.

And we round off with an amusing hoax story -- not really a malicious scam, but certainly an interesting test of people's gullibility.

It's disheartening to have to start this week's round-up of the scam headlines with another tale of family heartbreak revolving around a non-existent inheritance, the so called the 419 or Nigerian scam.

But we do so because it's clear people are still falling for this evil trick and we want to do all we can to help put a stop to it and prevent more misery.

We also have news of a couple of very widespread scams -- low level credit card charges and a piece of malware believed to have infected more than 3 million computers.

There's a new type of ID theft attack targeting seniors, a malware warning for BlackBerry users and a report of a clever business scam in which a conman convinced firms to buy rubbish metal from him.

Then there's our sting-in-the-tail -- literally. It's the story of the lobster and the crab.