Spam, spam, eggs and spam
I've noticed a disturbing trend. I seem to get a lot of e-mail letters from strangers claiming to be related to some important person in Africa or Asia whose assets are tied up because of a military coup or some other disaster. Only with my help can they save the family fortune, they claim. By helping them move millions of dollars out of their home country to a U.S. bank, they promise me a large cut of the money. All I have to do is provide a bank account number and several other pieces of personal information, or simply up-front cash.

Of course, armed with this information, these strangers can easily siphon thousands from bank accounts. Or they simply take the up-front money and run. From what I've heard, this is an extremely old scam. Entire cottage industries have sprung up around swindling gullible Americans using this type of story. The Internet just makes it cheaper to reach more potential victims.

I'm still trying to figure out how so much of this variety of spam gets past the office firewall to end up in my business e-mail account. I probably get four a week and delete them all.