There has been an ongoing campaign since the February of this year in Norway, started by Finn.no, to warn users of IE6 (Microsoft Internet Explorer 6) that they need to upgrade their browser. The information campaign has even been mentioned in computing websites as Wired and PCWorld.

About 20% of the users out there still are stuck with IE6. They probably use it at home and don’t know better, or they use it at work, and their system admin will not let them upgrade, because all the wonderful web apps they use only work in IE6.

Will we ever see the end of these terrible practices? Now a days it seems we’re very keen on being aware of product recalls and also for FDA alerts regarding food and drugs. Yet when it comes to our financial and personal information we’re loosy-goosey without a care in the world. Then, when the inevitable happens, we’re quick to shift the blame on those bad hackers.

Who’s really to blame? As everyday computer users we are quick to download those MP3s. We’re quick to open any kind of attachment from people we may not necessarily know. We fall into the trap of clicking on that link on the email from a bank to confirm our account details (as if the banks really needed you to do that).

Recently hackers have begun targeting social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. Once they can gain access into an account, they begin sending out messages and links to virus and spyware-filled sites. You can imagine why these social sites are going to be more and more popular to hackers. You’re already trusted by the friends you have on the site so people assume that if a friend has sent you something, it must be something safe right? Wrong.

Another social-engineering scam that has been on the rise is contacting people and claiming that a relative has been in a critical accident and that they need medical attention, only before they can receive it, they need financial information before they can be accepted at the hospital or clinic. Sounds serious right? except for the fact that it’s illegal to deny an individual medical attention because of not having financial details available for payment. Once the individual has given over the financial information, they’re sunk.

Scams, hacking, social-engineering is on the rise and will be as we move into a more technological world. The solution isn’t necessarily bigger and heavier programs to filter and scan and block things from us, it’s better education on our part. In most instances, a little probing, question asking, and information gathering, goes a long way in helping shield ourselves from these threats.

If you’ve ever had an email address and have given that email address to family members and friends, then you’ve been the victim of FW: otherwise know as a email forward, chain letter, or some funny video, story, joke, etc. These type of emails are some of the worst emails to perpetuate, for a number of reasons.

Unless you believe that being gullible is a good thing and you want everyone you know to also believe anything anyone will say, then go ahead and continue passing on those emails to 10, 20, 100, or a million people so that your wildest dreams will come true, or so that you won’t have every single bad thing possible in the world happen to you…hey, it’s what the email said, right? (FW: Cute Story, Pass it on to 1 Billion People in the next 5 minutes OR ELSE!!!)

So you may ask, why are these emails sent so often? Is it just because someone something interesting to share and it continues to be perpetuated? No, I’m afraid not, if you believe that, you’re skating towards the gullible crowd.

Email like this and others are ultimately generated and sent out by spammers for one of two general purposes. First, to harvest new email addresses for spamming. and second, to clog email systems all over the world.

Spammers don’t make money from people buying the products advertised in the spam email. Spammers usually aren’t the one selling the products. Spammers are hired by shady companies to deliver the company’s advertisement to the greatest number of people possible. The spammer is then paid by the company per number of successful email deliveries of the advertisement.

So ask yourself, if a spammer had to get a very large number of VALID and ACTIVE email addresses (remember, they only get paid if the spam email is safely delivered to an email address, rejected emails don’t count), how would you go about it? Searching online? Too time consuming. Randomly guessing email addresses? Not guaranteed to get active email addresses. Email forwards are a spammers dream. In any given email forward, you can find anywhere from 25 to hundreds of valid and active email addresses, and they are guaranteed because when you forward it to your friends and they send it on to their friends, it perpetuates this cycle of sending the forward to valid email addresses.

Every time a forward is sent, the previous email addresses specified in the email are sent in the message so after a couple of rounds you find the joke or story of the email at the bottom of the message after scrolling through hundreds of email addresses.

Now imagine this giant email message being sent to 25-100 people everytime you forward and copy your entire hotmail or yahoo address book. Then each of those individuals does the same. After a couple of rounds, the giant message is being delivered to thousands and thousands of email inboxes all over the world. As a one time email administrator, I can assure you that email servers don’t like giant messages, they don’t work well and bog down the mail delivery process. Another sick pleasure of spammers and other Web sadists, to cause as many problems for servers and administrators all over the world.

So next time you get one of these messages, please don’t forward it. Trust me, you won’t get that $10. And if you really want to read some funny jokes and cute stories, that’s what search engines are for, just search: “cute story” or “funny jokes”. You’ll get much more than you would from that email. Then, reply to the person who sent you the forwarded message and kindly ask them to never include your email address in another message like that because it’s just a way for spammers to gain access to your email address. Hopefully they will respect your wishes and will be sure to never do it again. If all else fails, create a brand new email address and don’t share it with anyone, that’s always a safe bet.

Although I can’t say that ALL of those advertisements are scams, it is safe to say that home-based money making opportunities have an extremely bad reputation. The odds are that you will not be that one person sitting on the beach with a fancy laptop, sipping pina coladas, whose picture caption says “I’m here but making thousands $$$ of dollars without having to do a thing!” There are ways to make money online without having to be doing something. However, this is not to say that you have not done a lot previously to get to that point.

Most making money at home opportunities today will fall into 1 (yes, just 1) category: Getting paid for someone buying something (or at least getting people to vendors’ Web sites.

Most “opportunities” really are just the bad word “piramid scheme” dressed up in tech-jargon (computer terms) or business lingo (smooth ways to force someone to do something they don’t want to do). The idea behind it is you sign up by paying someone who paid someone else who also had paid someone else to be able to offer this service. You then SPAM as many people, bulletin boards, blogs, etc. as possible trying to get people to go to your Web site and buy something so that then you get the commission for the person’s purchase.

You may be asking: But in our advanced age things really happen like this? The answer is: “Yes!”. Businesses are willing to may top dollar for you to bring in a new customer. The Web hosting industry, for example, is an extremely cut-throat industry. The services Web hosting companies offer are nearly all the same, but each company is trying their best to bring in new customers. Having worked in the Web hosting industry for several years, I’ve seen it from the inside. In a conversation with an owner of a Web hosting company, I was shocked to find out that many of the top Web hosting companies lose money on customers until the customer has been with the company for at least 2+ years. So if you sign up with XYZ hosting and leave them anytime before 2 years that company has lost money for the services you used.

Companies use Google, Yahoo, and other ad placing companies like Commission Junction, Clickbank, etc. to find ways to bring in more customers. Especially since the Internet has sold out on traditional ways to improve the placement of Web sites, companies have to resort to paying the search engines to give them better search rankings. Ever clicked on a link inside a blue box on a Google search results page? If so, a company has been charged for that click….whether you’ve purchase something or not.

In any case, many of these make money at home offers are trying to get you to continue the piramid so that others above you can make money. Some companies will offer incentives like a free Web site for you to make money. Think about it, some company out of the goodness of their hearts just wants to give you a “free” Web site so you can fire your boss and go live on the beach for the rest of your life? No. They want to make money. They will offer you free Web pages, that are exactly the same for every single one of their customers IF you buy a hosting account. When you buy, the company makes the commission on your sale. Then, you are on your own to do something with that “Free” Web site, and that company will never be heard from again.

So next time you go to Monster.com or Careerbuilder.com and are tempted to look into that “Make $1,000,000,000,000 in seconds, you’d be a fool to not click here!!!” job offer, stop and think about who will really be making money off of this.