Tech consultant for Olympia, Lacey, And Tumwater

I am always shocked at how easy it is to fool people into giving up not only their own personal data, but their friends and loved ones as well. I just saw an online friend post a link to a cute little Christmas E-card. It looks so innocent until you look in the upper right corner. There is where you give them your friends email. This is an age old scam people. It is as old as the internet itself.

This is called harvesting data. They trick you into giving them all your friends contact info. Then they sell that info so that your friend can get tons of spam. Follow the money! How do you think they pay for this crap? They sell the data collected. Do you see a “privacy policy” anywhere? There is a reason. You have no privacy when it comes to an online greeting. E-cards are all scams! Do not send them to me. Do not send them at all! Do you like spam? Then by all means keep this up.

Oh yeah, Farmville (and games like it) are a scam as well.