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All spam emails we receive every day in tens or hundreds are annoying and disgusting. But the worst of them are scams, hoaxes, and illegal schemes aimed at defrauding you of your money, private information, and even your life. Being aware of how the spam scams work you will be able to protect yourself against the spammers-fraudsters and not to become a victim of their fraudulent schemes.

A lot of spam scams arrive in the form of a great investment offer. It usually works as a Pyramid scheme. Spammers ask you to pay money for a membership, goods, or simply to "invest" promising you much money as revenue. Your revenue will come from those people who will invest after you. Your investment is distributed to those who joined before you. At some point the pyramid ruins because there are not enough new investors to keep the money flowing. The spammer is at the top of the pyramid and he is the only one who benefits. The scan may not always look like an investment offer. The spammers can ask you to distribute some advertising letters to a list of email addresses, for remuneration. Although they will tell you that the list contains only opt-in email addresses, it's not true, and you will be sending spam directly from your computer.

Another fraudulent scheme you may meet looks like a letter coming from a company that you do business with. Usually the spammer asks you to follow a link within the message supposedly to update your account. But actually this is done to worm you out your personal and financial information. If you click on that link, you will be brought to a page that will look like a company's web site. While you are logging in or filling the form in, the program is recording your keystrokes and all your private information * account number, user name, password, social security number * is disclosed. Never click on the links included in such emails. Just open a company's web site in a separate window and check your account details out.

Nigerian spam is one of the most dangerous email scams. The mechanism of the scam is simple. The spammer sends you a badly spelled letter on behalf of a government official, deposed ruler, or relative of a ruling family asking you for help. They have some goods, money, or jewels that they cannot access due to political reasons. They ask you to allow them transfer large sums of money into your bank account. They promise to remunerate you for your kindness, or even leave all money to you. Attractive offer, isn*t it? Don*t be a dolt, don*t believe them. They tempt you into a trap. Their object is to obtain your account number and bank transfer information. They also may ask you to send them a fee to bribe some corrupt government officials. Further you may receive additional officially looking letters where you will be asked to provide further documents, private information, and money. When they have *played* with you long enough, or believe that you may suspect to be led on, they will rob you and quite.

Take care! Don*t react upon any spam message whatever tempting offer it contains. Delete it at once, or let an anti-spam filter delete all spam before you download it into your inbox.