One spam-scam that’s showing some unfortunate staying power is the “word-of-mouth” fraud. For some months now, I’ve been getting reports from readers who’ve received an e-mail message claiming that “an acquaintance of your's recently shared their experience with you in our online community, Word-of-Mouth.Org” or something similar. If you go to the site to try to see what this supposed friend said about you, you discover it costs $20 to become a “Power User” and use their system.

Of course, no one has actually said anything about you. It is just a scam. I suspect this operation would have been shut down months ago (spam may not be illegal, but fraud certainly is) if they weren’t based overseas. So keep your cool if you get one of these messages. The only information that’s been shared about you is some lowlife spammer sold your e-mail address to another spammer. For most of us, unfortunately, that’s a daily occurrence.