Deals that look too good to be true for hot gift items probably pose a threat to shoppers, as the deals front for credit card stealing websites.

Okay, ladies, here’s something you poke fun of the men with: While more men than women claim to be well-informed about online scams, more men have fallen victim to them than women.

Don’t like those ads in your Gmail inbox? Well, stop complaining, because they might be protecting you.

SEOmoz questioned the “click-fruaders” and asked them to share some of the techniques used to get paid by Google and the other search engines.

Those nonstop scam emails from Nigeria that attempt to swindle people will face new law enforcement efforts aided by Microsoft.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), National Consumers League and Microsoft urged consumers to beware of phishing schemes aimed at stealing their identities.

The millions of dollars donated by individuals to relief efforts in Southeast Asia have brought criminals and scammers out of the woodwork, US government agencies and private anti-fraud groups warned last week, Internetworld.com reported.

Reciprocal link scams are on the rise. It is no secret that most search engines count the quantity and quality of incoming links to a website when deciding how to rank it. In fact some give weight to the ratio of incoming links versus outbound links. This has lead some webmasters to use some unscrupulous tactics in order to inflate their search engine rankings at the expense of their link partners.

Ask Jeeves, Inc. announced today that they have extended their relationship with Google as a provider of sponsored advertising links on Ask Jeeves’ global search and portal brands through 2007.

A passionate debate is currently raging in the Copywriters Forum about long versus short copy. (If you haven’t joined, do so. Click the “register” link the top. It’s free. There are tons of tips from other very successful copywriters.)

As more and more people opt-out of conventional jobs and instead choose to work from their homes, the number of work-at-home scams has also increased. Each year thousands of people find out the hard way that opportunities which are too good to be true usually are but not before they invest and waste millions of dollars a year.

We all know there’s been alot of chaos lately about new anti-Spam laws and honest business owners like you and me don’t want to have our businesses and ezines shut down due to false complaints. Yet we also know that true Spammers and Scammers will continue to get away with their crap.

One thing I think we ALL agree on: There are way too many scams out there. Both online and off. Things like:

“Erase Bad Debt !”
“Remove Negative Items From Your Report”

There have been many articles that tell you to be wary of a scam if certain information isn’t readily available – namely a street address and testimonials you can verify. This is ridiculous, because people need more privacy in light of spam and all types of scammers. Another problem concerns those phone messages and emails you sent, that go unanswered – but there might be a good reason for that.