Another scam that claims one has won half a million Euros and a new Audi Car. None of that is true of course.The usual "keep it confidential" clause is there.

This is another scam, capitalizing on the building boom in the United Arab Emirates. The scammer claims that there is excess money due to contract over estimation, and wants a reliable person to help with the bank transfers.

None of that is true of course ...

According to the CBC gadget early adopters are arrogant.

Moreover they quote a study:

In a study earlier this year, Mindset found that people who bought
Apple Inc.'s Macintosh computers to be more liberal and open-minded,
but also exhibiting traits of superiority.

Here is an overview of the study.

Everyone who is in the tech field must have checked the Dilbert at some point. For those who are working in large corporations, they can draw parallels between what is on the comic and what they see around them at the work place.

Other tech oriented comics are xkcd and User Friendly, which is Canadian by the way.

Now, there is a new comic strip that is also technology oriented, with a slant towards the social web: it is by Rob Cottingham of Social Signal, a consulting firm in Vancouver that builds a lot of Drupal sites.

The comic is called Noise to Signal, and it is quite hilarious, and to the point. Add it to your RSS feed!

Keep it up Rob, like Scott Adams, this will be your full time day job some time.

This is a classical scam promising a lot of money for a too-good-to-be-true job for little work. The scam centers on the victim getting a cheque and asked to cash it and wiring the bulk of it and keep the difference for "testing the wire transfer service".

Someone sent me this today, asking me to make a seal with Hebrew letters on it:

i want to know if you can make a seal with hebrew letters on it . Please
let me know my phone is 305-555 1212 Thanks rene

This is again mistaken identity, due to an article I wrote a while ago on the history of Seal of Solomon and Star of David.

I got this email today from someone who lost money because of the fake Microsoft lottery wining. He thinks that my site is Microsoft, and contacting me based on that.

People are milked in these scams on fake courier and insurance fees, then bank fees, and the scam goes on as long as the person continues to pay in the hope of getting money.

Yahoo has an article on how apostrophes and other non-English punctuation in people's names cause a lot of trouble, specially when computers are involved.

It can stop you from voting, destroy your dental appointments, make
it difficult to rent a car or book a flight, even interfere with your
college exams.

I use the Linux dump program to do backups. I use a set of scripts making the process as unattended as can be. The scripts send me an email with the result so I am informed of the outcome.

Viewing today's email status message in Gmail had a hilarious surpise in it. Look at the ad on the right hand side.

Google thought that the email subject and text here has "Dump" in it, an display an ad about "She dumped me" ... "Get your girl back".

Mainstream media is finally covering money-mule scams disguised as a work at home offers.

Cyber crime comes in many forms, whether it is phishing, 419 Nigerian scams, fraudulent cheques or money order scams, and much more. In all cases, money changes hand, and it needs to be funnelled back to the scammers in a way that will hide its origins.