It’s one of the newest spam tactics – spam vacation messages. Here’s how it works: spammers sign up for mailing lists, never intending to read them. Instead they put themselves on permanent vacation status, create one of those infernal “I’m on vacation” messages full of their spam message, and let the vacation program do their spamming for them. If they’re lucky, the mailing list is one where the vacation message goes back to the entire mailing list. So far we’ve seen spam vacation messages hawking mydosell.com, wholesaler-electronic.com, qigefa.com, and easevshop.com.

You may be surprised – and you will certainly be relieved – to hear that the criminals behind the scam warranty phone calls – or so-called “robocalls” or “robodialing” – have actually been caught, and are being prosecuted by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). It turns out that a huge number of the calls were made by Christopher Cowart and his Transcontinental Warranty company, calling names and numbers supplied by a company called Voice Touch that is owned by James Dunne and Maureen Geisen Dunne, and using Caller I.D. spoofing technology developed by Damian Kohlfeld.

Click jacking is a malicious practice in which the bad guys essentially lay an invisible web page on top of the page that the user sees, so that when the user clicks a button or link, they are really performing the action of the invisible link that is overlayed on top of the button or link they believe that they are clicking (hence the term “click jack”). Often that invisible link is structured to grab their confidential information, such as a username and password.

A new scam going around the internet, originating from “security@paypalfraudcheck.com”, tells Paypal users that their account has been limited, and to remove the limit, they must scan and email a copy of their passport or driver’s license, a copy of their Paypal credit or debit card, and a copy of a recent utility bill.

A new email scam floating around the Internet includes a picture of what appears to be a genuine passport in the name of the sender. The sample we have appears to be a real Algerian passport in the name of Morsli Boubakeur, which is who our email – coming from mauvai98@yahoo.fr – is allegedly from. But it’s still a scam – don’t be taken in.

“You have received a postcard from a family member!”, says the subject of one of the latest spam scams.

If you receive a death threat email, you’re in good company. The so-called “Hitman email” scam has made a comeback. Around since at least 2006, the content of the death threat email has evolved some, but the general gist of it remainds the same: the Hitman email claims that someone wants you dead, that the Hitman email sender has been hired to kill you, and that if you come up with a sufficient amount of money, they will spare your life.

We’ll bet that when you are looking for discount travel – especially discount air travel, and cheap air fares and cheap flights – that you turn to discount travel sites, such as Expedia .com, right? But while the Expedia travel site purports to offer cheap air flights – and sucks people in with the promise of cheap air plane tickets – Expedia airfare isn’t always the cheapest – people just assume that Expedia flights are less expensive! Worse, Expedia flights are sometimes not authorized at all, meaning that Expedia com does not have a relationship with – let alone permission from – the airline to offer those cheap airfare tickets! Your effort to get cheap air fare could backfire, and you’ll have paid more than if you’d just gone directly to the airline! Bottom line? For cheap airline flights, instead of relying solely on discount travel sites (cheap plane flights are one of the primary things for which people use sites such as Expedia travel), go directly to the airlines and ask them about their cheap flights!

Service by email of a subpena does not constitute legal service, yet thousands of CEOs and upper-level executives across the United States have recently been taken in by an unwelcome email in their inbox. The email, claiming to be a Federal subpoena (or, if you’re from California, “subpena”) from “subpoena@uscourts.com,” bears the seal of the U.S. District Court, and demands the recipient present themselves at a grand jury hearing in San Diego on May 7th. In addition the email contains a link and the instruction that the linked document should be downloaded and printed.

In addition to the breed of filth known as “typo squatters” (people who register domains which are common misspellings of popular domains, and then put ads on them), and “drop squatters” (people who grab established domains the moment that the domain’s registration lapses (i.e. is “dropped”) – and set up shop on the domain – again, nothing but ads – to take advantage of the traffic that comes to the domain), we want to bring to your attention a particularly slimy breed that we call the “Doppelganger Squatter”.

If you’ve ever gotten an email from someone offering to pay you to put a link on your site – or even if you’ve just ever stumbled across a link from one site to another that is completely out of context – you’ve probably stumbled across one of the newer grey areas on the Internet: paying someone who couldn’t care less about the quality of the content of your website to go find and spam other websites who won’t care about the quality of the content of your website and convince them to link to your site.

Well now, here is a new twist on the age-old scam. No deposed, dead Nigerian potentate here. Instead, a broken-Englished girl named Kim, whose father Henry died tragically and left his estate to his daughter but she can only get it when she marries. So perhaps you, dear target, are the lucky man. Email addresses implicated in this scam, so far, include liiluv2000@yahoo.com and kimluv_account@mail2world.com.

People across the country are reporting telephone calls coming from the numbers (623) 238-6228 and (408) 587-2116. These calls claim that your car warranty is expiring, but they are really scam artists trying to steal your personal information and identity. So if the number appearing on your cellphone screen is either (623) 238-6228 or (408) 587-2116, don’t answer it! Other numbers generating these spam identity theft calls include (202) 552-1332, (702) 520-1105, (609) 948-0971 and (562) 289-8136.

The FBI is warning of an increase in what have come to be known as “vishing attacks” – where scammers call someone on the telephone, but make the call using VoIP, which not only is much more difficult to trace, but allows the scammer to spoof the phone number from which they are calling (making the number which shows up on the caller I.D. appear to be from someone else).

A Gmail confirmation scam email is going around, asking you to verify your Gmail account. “Dear Account User,” the request starts out – and goes on to say that you need to confirm your Gmail account, or it will be closed down. Of course, the language is wrong, and it wasn’t even necessarily sent to your Gmail account, but still, people will be taken in by this scam, which asks for your account username and password, your date of birth, and your country of residence. Here’s the scam reproduced in full – if you get this, don’t reply!