Phishing Down By the Pond

Today, a few words about phishing and scam emails.

If you have a celebrity site, do not resort to phishing to generate a stream of visitors. I personally find it incredibly annoying. I believe in a free market economy where individuals should be able to market their wares. However, the items I would probably purchase are never part of such solicitation. I luckily do not need viagra and hopefully will not need it for many years to come -- I also do not need any other pills or medications. The spammers selling products, I can stand -- but it is those Phishing emails I dislike the most. They can really screw someone for a lot of money if they fall for it -- and unfortunately they do. I am admittedly an occasional listener to Howard Stern -- and every so often an old person would call up his studio lines about an investment they made. It seemed that the scammer gave them Stern's phone number as a contact. Some of these people lost thousands. I also cannot tell you how many contests throughout Europe I have won or how many relatives of deceased rich politicians from third world countries have received my email from a "reliable source." Can you believe that I am having multiple eBay and paypal problems on accounts that are not registered with either website!

The plan that some email carries have to charge bulk-email senders may be of some help, however, it is coming at a cost of legitimate businesses. Maybe legitimate businesses should be able to go through a screening process to have themselves removed from the bulk email charge. Another idea I have is to have all bulk non-solicited email to be "tagged" or "coded" as such and automatically placed into an unsolicited mail folder in the recipient's mailbox -- that way if you are looking for that male enhancement product, you will not be out of luck, and the seller is not denied his/her right to disseminate information. The fear is that a small site like ours, which will soon have a free newsletter, will be sending out bulk email to our subscribers - and we want to keep it free without being hit-up with these bulk fees that are not even meant for us.

What else can we do about it. When I get emails on my aol account I automatically hit "Report Scam" - but I keep on getting the same ones over and over. Sometimes I will send out an email that says that we have detected your email as being a scam and have sent it to the proper authorities. I wish I sometimes knew who the proper authorities were (e.g., if you get an eBay or paypal scam - forward the email to spoof@ebay.com or spoof@paypal.com, some of the other big companies have similar addresses as well.

If there is someone from a government agency or police department that needs some help fighting phishing -- we at www.PopStarsPlus.com are willing to help out if it will get rid of the real spammers. Just tell us what we or our visitors need to do.

A nice day out on the lake in the middle of Spring with my fishing pole, a radio, food and drink would be very nice right about now.

Until next time . . .

I.R.