1. Email Viruses

A few years ago an email surfaced among the users on AOL. The e-mail told a tale about a strange virus which would destroy your computer. Naturally, in good faith, people passed the e-mail onto each other, but what was really happening was that the email was preying on the ignorance of the recipient to perpetuate the hoax.
Ironically, there is a virus here, but it’s not a computer virus. The e-mail plays on our good nature to forward a copy of this mail to our friends – which is by the very definition, a virus. Another thing that people do to fall victim to the, is try to explain to others why the virus alert is not real. The fact that it is being explained in this article is assisting in perpetuating the myth.
If you are truly concerned about viruses, we suggest the best source for virus information is CIAC, the Computer Incident Advisory Capability, a working group of the United States Department of Energy. The CIAC Website can be found at (http://ciac.llnl.gov/).
Should you get an email detailing the "Good Times" virus, have a good laugh about it and delete it. A final note on this topic: IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR A VIRUS OF ANY SORT TO BE SENT IN THE BODY OF A MESSAGE. YOU CAN CONTRACT A COMPUTER VIRUS BY RUNNING AN ATTACHED EXECUTABLE FILE, BUT YOU CANNOT GET ONE BY READING THE TEXT EMAIL. If possible turn your e-mail program to text only and not html. Viruses are a real danger, but the "Good Times" virus is a hoax. DON'T FALL FOR IT!

2. A Dying Child

The idea of this scam goes something like this: You receive an email detailing a child who is dying. Before the child dies, he/she would like to receive emails from as many people as possible. The email goes on to ask you to forward this email to as many people as possible. Originally, the story was the same, but the child wanted postcards so that he could get himself into the Guinness book of records for the most mail received. In fact it got so bad at one point Guinness announced that they would not carry that category any longer. With the Internet becoming more publicly accessible, the scam was updated to be emails instead of postcards.
Occasionally this same tactic is used as a means of revenge for some slight, real or imagined. Delete the email, do not forward it to your friends and do not respond to the email address provided.

3. Money Making Scams
You are likely to find friends on the Internet from all walks of life, but occasionally you may run into someone offering you the "deal of the century". Unfortunately, on the internet there are people who try to rip you off. Remember the old adage, "If the deal sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't true!”
The best approach would be to respond to the email in this manner.
"TO: hotdeal@anysite.com
CC: admin@anysite.com, postmaster@anysite.com, root@anysite.com, sysop@anysite.com
Subject: Spamming
Sirs,
I do not appreciate receiving unsolicited emails of this nature. Please remove me from your list immediately!"
Note the "CC:" field. In that field included some of the most commonly used names by the system owner from which the email originated have been included. Most system administrators are adamantly against people abusing their system and they regard sending unsolicited email as an abuse. The idea being - By sending a reply you are asking to be removed from their list, and alerting the owners of the system to a probable violation of their own rules.
Should this fail, visit spamcop.net for further assistance.
This problem has gotten so bad resulting in some of the larger ISP's creating a complaint department for handling such complaints, throwing violators off the system.

by C.T.D.