I love my spam filter.  It’s like a magical gnome that lives in my computer, weeding out the junk from my inbox so I don’t have to read stock tips, ads for penile enhancement or whatever else has scrambled up from the dark underbelly of the internet.

But my beloved spam filtering gnome is not perfect, and the other day an email landed in my inbox from my bank, or at least it looked like it was from my bank.  It said that an error in a program had eaten my personal information and I should go to such-and-such a site to re-enter it.

Spam like that is called a phishing scam.  The scammer sends out thousands of these emails in the hopes that some poor schmuck will enter all their name, birthday, Social Security Number, and more into the phony website.  Then whoops!  Instant identity theft!

The companies you deal with in the real world, like your bank, you ISP, and even online vendors like Amazon.com and iTunes never use these types of emails to get your information.  They have other ways of talking to you if they need to.  If someone’s trying to get your information through an email, 99% of the time it’s a scam.  So you’re better off never responding at all.  Just delete them.

The internet is crawling with snake oil salesmen and people out to steal your money.  Most of their scams of pretty transparent, with subject lines like Re: moeicu VIzAGRA!!! (what does that even mean?)  But some are getting more sophisticated.  So be suspicious of any emails or messages asking for your money or personal information.  If something doesn’t feel right or looks off somehow, delete it!