I received this scam e-mail supposed to be from Bank of America. The scammer cannot even spell properly. I deactivated the live link.

Your Online Banking is Blocked

Because of unusual number of invalid login attempts on you account, we had to believe that, their might be some security problem on you account. So we have decided to put an extra verification process to ensure your identity and your account security. Please click on "Sign Onto Online Banking" to continue to the verification process and ensure your account security. It is all about your security. Thank you. and visit the customer service section.

I hope your reported it to the bank and to your ISP.

I also got one claiming that someone had tried to change the access code to my ATM card and if I would only send the number and secret code be return e-mail to "the bank", they would fix that for me.

Both used the header "Chase Card Services", and we do bank there. Chase NEVER sends e-mails to individual customers. NEVER.

I reported both to the bank.

Then I got a Nigerian lottery e-mail....

What is this? I've never had so many of these things at the same time. Are even the scam artists going broke?

Desperate times. I just read about one that actually threatens your life unless you pay up & sad that people have fallen for it.

Sadly, the ones that can least afford it are the ones that most often get sucked in.

You'd think after all these years of warnings about the exact same scams, people would get the hint.

There's a pernicious ... malware? going around now. It pops up and says you need to update your virus definitions, or you need to run a scan, or some such. Once you hit it, it downloads a program which you essentially can't get rid of, because it gets into your registry and all that. Then, if you hit "uninstall", it demands that you pay for the service!

Hubby fell for this one (except the paying part), but he's only been using the computer for a couple of months or so. My geek-in-training son was home that week and helped us fix it. I think the spyware packages and anti-virus packages have caught up to this one. There were literally dozens of posts on-line about this when we picked it up, all less than a week old.

I did send it to my ISP.

The format of the email was identical to those that come from Bank of America. They had duplicated the colors, layout and fine print on the bottom very well. They probably just cut and pasted it and added the message. The only real clue that it was fake was the faulty grammar in the message. Most people won't respond regardless, but there are plenty who would.

That one is fairly common and the scammers substitute any of the major banks. I get at least one a month. Usually for a bank that I haven't used in 10 years. I've gotten them about Paypal and Billpay services as well. I always send them to both the bank and my isp when I get them.

I almost fell for that "you have a virus" popup. I did click on it, but my virus scanner caught it before it could infect my system (I use avg antivirus from grisoft.com). Now when I see that, I contact the webmaster for whatever page I was viewing and tell them that they are being reported to one or more of the big anti-virus companies for spreading malware. I don't see that ad as often anymore.

Recently, I got an email that said that I had won 1,000,000 quid (I don't know how to make the symbol for british currency) in a UK lottery. The email said that the drawing was based on a random sampling of email addresses and no entry had been required, just an email address. Everything was spelled right, and even had proper grammar. The only thing that I noticed was they used American english for some of the words like center instead of centre. For a UK lottery, I would have expected them to use Queen's english spellings.

Never, ever click on a link in an email, even if you know and trust who sent it. Copy the link to notepad first and verify that it really is going where you expect it to. If it comes out as an IP address, chances are that it is not your bank. Always use your normal method of contacting your bank and not the link you were given in an email. That way you are less likely to be opening your system to invasion by someone in Kazakstan or Outer Mongolia or even your 14 year old neighbor. And keep your virus scanner as up to date as possible. Disconnect from the web when you are not using it. There is no reason to "go online" if all you are going to be doing is playing solitaire or writing a book.