So email spam is obviously a big deal these days. With viagra offers, celebrity nude pics, and Nigerian princes looking for ways to send you millions, our inboxes are filled with what seems like an endless supply of unsolicited garbage. Usually the spam is obvious as it’s generally some automated, poorly written email with very generalized information and from some incredibly bogus person or company. However, sometimes you’ll get these types of emails and they are much better disguised and are from somewhat legitimate companies.

Take for example the following email from Luke at Motive Interactive:

I am contacting you today to find out if you have any available advertising
innovatory on your blog.

Motive Interactive is releasing our next version of our Affiliate Marketing
Network and we
are looking to sponsor your blog with a paid review as well as a 125X125
sponsorship.

Possibly you have some other ideas and I would love to talk with you about
them.

To be clear this is for Motive Interactive to place advertisements on your
blog to promote our company’s new release of our Network.

Thank you for you time,

Luke [last name removed]

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Spore, one of the year’s most anticipated computer games was released Sunday. It’s a game that has been in development for what seems like an eternity and now that it’s out, it has received a lot of attention from the video game masses. Sadly, most comments, critiques, and discussions seem to be focused not on the game itself, but on the anti-piracy software that the game’s publisher, Electronic Arts, has incorporated with the game.

What is this apparently evil piece of software? Digital Rights Management (DRM) of course. You see, DRM has become a dirty word for most gaming geeks. With software, movies, and music becoming easier and easier to steal online, various entertainment publishers have decided try and fight back by developing various software protections that they hope will discourage these digital pirates from obtaining their goods.

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Well, the time has come to wrap up my series on fake profiles. I could go on and on about the various ways shady individuals use fake profiles to exploit unsuspecting Web-goers, but I believe I’ve covered the big problem areas by tackling MySpace and other social networks, online dating websites, and Craigslist scams.

You may not think fake profiles on the Web are a big deal, but recent news shows otherwise with a Craiglist fake profiler being sued and the case where faking MySpace information may become a federal crime. As long as there’s money in creating fake profiles online, there will be seedy people there to do it.

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