"Email is NOT secure, never has been, never will be."

That's true and I'm not sure what the "scam" is. Ollie North made it clear the limitations of even intelligent people's understanding of common technology.

Petitechevre wrote

those that get caught, deserve it...

[\quote]

... and other derogatory comments about 'dumb' people.

Well, not all of us are computer-savvy. (I am, but that's not the point). There are millions of people who have email accounts and are unaware of the risks of providing their account data in response to an email that looks as if it has come from their hosting company. Does that make them dumb? No, it does not. Naive perhaps.

With an attitude like yours, If you ever do something stupid in your life (and we all do), you might not be too surprised if no-one comes to your aid

Simon

To the small cheese I can only say that the world would be a much poorer place without the genuinely naive and innocent and the rest of us cleverer and more street wise people have a responsibility to point out the traps and pitfalls in life to them.

The truth is, they never learn... even the hard way.

Yes...we need *someone* to take advantage of

I shouldn't need to warn people of this but a reasonably well known Farang BKK journo has had his email account hacked and his entire address book taken.

Apparently every one in it, myself included, has received an email stating he's been robbed in Nigeria and could $3000 be sent urgently to get him home.

The guy is safe at home and suffering considerable embarrassment because of this.

Time I changed my passwords I guess.

Yes, when you are stupid enough to give your user name AND password away to someone claiming to be Yahoo-mail or similar

Nigeria and 3000 USD says enough

And Jeez, get yourself a REAL email account, I only use Yahoomail etc as trash-email

Exactly so...why would Hotmail, Yahoo, Google, or any other mail/messenger provider...or bank or anything else for that matter...need you to supply their password? If they truly were needed confirmation, all they would have to do is send you an email and simply ask "Are you still using this account?"

Even then, they would never do this because they can simply check their logs for usage.

I realize that many folks are not especially computer literate, but come on...apply a small amount of logic and you will see how stupid it is to fall for things like this.