STOCK SCAMS A GROWING THREAT
Here we are, well on our way into the 21st century. The human race has been around for at least 5,767 years as of last weekend (the Jewish New Year), and we've been working with e-mail, Internet and spam for over a decade already. With those credentials, you'd think people would know better.
Well, we do know better - but some people never learn. The proof? Many people are following the advice offered in the flood of stock-scam spam that has hit the Internet in recent months, leaving virtually no computer immune.
I'm sure that some To The Pointers are among them.
According to a recent study by Internet researchers at Harvard and Purdue Universities, the prices of "penny stocks" being touted in mass mailings to suckers actually rose significantly after a batch of messages were sent - as if recipients were rushing to their online brokers to buy the likes of Cyberhand Tech and ThermaFreeze Products in the hope that they could double their money.
Well, the come-ons are certainly appealing, but it's a scam, of course; all part of "pump and dump" schemes, where scammers buy stock in companies that exist mainly on paper and are traded on unsupervised exchanges, and then dump the shares on those who respond to their spam.
It must be working, because in the past few months stock spam has begun edging out fat pills and Viagra messages in my inbox!


