Opinion Bamboozled by e-mail By John Gathright	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
迷惑メールにご用心 あらゆる情報にだれでもアクセスできるのが インターネットの素晴らしいところ。 だがそこは、ある種の無法地帯でもある。

Have you been bamboozled, whitewashed, flimflammed or had your leg pulled lately? Well, I have. I fell for an e-mail scam. I'm surprised that I was so gullible, because, honestly, I never fall for get-rich-quick schemes, "You just won a free something!" e-mails, and those kinds of things. But this time, I was bamboozled, and it was by an e-mail that I thought was from an old friend.

It was a very short message, an urgent appeal from a high-school friend for the e-mail addresses of everyone in our high-school graduation class. The sender's name was authentic, and it even referred to the sports team that we both played on. So I sent him the addresses.

What a mistake! My whole graduation class was spammed to buy pornographic material that appeared as though it were recommended personally by me! I knew nothing about the company that did the spam nor had I ever purchased any of their products or been to their Web site.

It appears that this company had found my name in an e-mail that I had written to a chat group. The e-mail included both my friend's name and mine, as well as information on our high-school baseball team. Not only was this a fraudulent scam, it wasted many hours of my time and that of my whole graduation class.

Later, I discovered that this was one of the newer hoaxes flying around the Web, and although I am still embarrassed, I am apparently just one of millions around the world who fell for it.

The Internet is a great tool for education, communication, commerce and so on, but for con artists and hoaxers, it is bliss. The Internet offers pranksters millions of chances to fool gullible and naive people every hour of the day, every day of the year.

Believe me, there is plenty to be afraid of. It is unbelievable how many different ways there are to fool people through the Internet into wasting their time and losing their money, reputation and goodwill.

Hoaxes are not only inconvenient and damaging, but even if we never open any of the spam or junk e-mail we receive, it still costs Internet users millions and millions of dollars each year, which are reflected in the priceof Internet service providers. Not to mention all of our time and efforts to erase and delete unwanted e-mails.

It is important that we confirm suspicious e-mails from friends or companies directly before we open them. It is sad that we have to be leery of hoaxes and spam every time we open our e-mail. But in some ways it is the price that we must pay for being able to have a world of information at our fingertips.

In order to stop more people from being bamboozled like I was, I registered the hoaxes at the Web site www.hoaxbusters.org that attempts to warn people of hoaxes and scams.

I even talked to a person from Hoaxbusters by phone who told me, "The Internet is a jungle, and only the witty and careful surviｖe. As long as there are gullible people there will be hoaxes." Well, once bitten twice shy! From now on, I plan to be more careful.

Shukan ST: June 6, 2003

(C) All rights reserved