Saturday, June 21, 2008

Scammers and Music Instructors

Now that I'm posting on Craigslist with more regularity, I'm getting replies from scammers.

The latest is 'I'm a military nurse in Iraq and was a good and active member of my church choir and am coming home to my special funds, of which you are now in my budget' variety.

I'm afraid that for the first one, however, the scammer simply wrote and said she'd like to take piano lessons.

So I e-mailed her back. Only then did the 'military nurse' thing come up, and I knew it was a scam. Also, another scammer just e-mailed me with a nearly identical message.

So . . . am I screwed now that this c&%$ has my e-mail? I remember Dave F. and Phoenix saying that scammers can get into your computer and all sorts of scary stuff.

4 comments:

fairyhedgehog said...

I'm not a techie but I don't think scammers can get into your pc if you've got a decent virus checker working and don't open email attachments from people you don't know. Maybe Dave F. and Phoenix can answer this one for you more accurately.

If you do get compromised, I know a forum where you can get help to disinfect your pc for free (or for a donation to Hedgehog Rescue).

If you've got a gmail account, you can mark the offending email as spam and everything from the sender goes into the spam folder from then on.

For future use, you could set up a spamgourmet account which gives you unlimited disposable addresses.

I do hate that people try to take advantage like that.

Stacy said...

Well, there were no attachments, but I own a Mac. I think the computer has firewalls built in.

If this scammers tech skills are as low as her grammatical skills, I'll be fine.

I'll do what you suggest for my gmail account.

Robin S. said...

I'd email Phoenix if I were you, freddie. She's a tech genius.

I don't understand all the ways to be in trouble with this stuff.

Stacy said...

Thanks, Robin. I still have her e-mail, so I'll shoot her one and see what she says.