Gotcha!

@Random

A modern-day version might well add trojans and wardrivers and phishers "" all our contemporary bogies online. Here's a rough guide to cyberspace scams, new and old.

1) Nigerian scamalikes: The most notorious scam on the Net has spread to Liberia, parts of Latin America and Iraq. The pitch is the same: someone who has access to vast funds needs your help and your bank account number in order to transfer those funds "" in return you'll get a massive cut.

If you bite "" and enough have to make this billion-dollar scam Nigeria's third-largest industry! "" the scam will play out. In the benign version, you'll be relieved of some cash for fees needed before the millions can be yours.

If you're truly gullible, you'll head off to Nigeria or Liberia to "inspect" bank vaults and might face actual kidnapping. The best way to deal with Nigerian scammers, also called

419-ers from the section of the penal code this falls under (ours is 420!), is to dump their appeals in the trashcan.

Donation scams are on the rise "" a site will ask you to donate generously for tsunami victims or cancer patients, but will either siphon off the cash or steal your credit card details.

One nasty variant is the tsunami email: click on the "tsunami.exe" attachment and bingo, your computer's infected with spyware. Auction scams, where the "seller" rapidly parts you from your money while you wait for the new gizmo or bicycle to arrive, are also proliferating.

2) Phishing and pharming scams are booming. "Phishers" look for sensitive data such as credit card details and passwords. Some send out emails offering great software at unbelievable prices or medicines ditto: if you bite, they will ask you for sensitive details such as bank account information.

Some emails masquerade as official emails from your bank, your cellphone provider or even the tax department demanding information.

"Pharmers" are close cousins of phishers: they set up sites that mimic, say, your bank's Netbanking pages or your online stockbroker's site, and harvest information once you obligingly type it in. Always check the URL; if it looks fishy, you're probably being phished. And never give out personal information online.

3) The old version of click fraud involved Internet ads and pop-up windows: Some were genuine, but some led users who clicked on them to porn sites or sites that installed spyware or trojans on their machines.

The 2005 version is aimed at website owners, who pay each time visitors "click" on the small ads on the site. Owners buy ads off search engines like Google to direct more traffic to their site; they will pay for ad clicks because of the increased business.

Scammers hire teams "" some have outsourced to India! "" to spend all day clicking ads on targeted sites. The website owner pays up, but the search engine never sees that money. The scammer has already "phished" the website owner and diverted the ad revenue to his own pocket.

4) As mobile phones get smarter and wi-fi catches on, the problems are likely to multiply. Cellphones, instant messaging networks and net telephony systems already see variations on spam ("spim" for IM networks, "spit" for net telephony).

The new generation of cellphones, which store everything from the user's phone book to banking details and passwords, are especially vulnerable.

5) Meanwhile, wardrivers have sprung up all over the US and parts of Europe: Teams, usually of kids with no malign intent, who use wi-fi seeking software rigged up to an ordinary desktop computer in a car to drive around cities looking for wireless networks.

Wireless signals can be transmitted well beyond your home to a radius of about 300 feet. If a user on a wireless network has put in adequate protection, he's fine; if he hasn't, he's effectively broadcasting his vulnerability to anyone who's, well, driving by.

Once wireless networks increase penetration in India, expect to see our first wardrivers "" presumably in Bangalore or Hyderabad.