Once in a while, all of us will receive an email from strangers, telling us how to make lots of money, if only we would follow their directions. Now and then we would be tempted into thinking that perhaps there is nothing too morally wrong about taking money off a corrupt Nigerian officer, and we shall then live happily ever after.

Yes, cheaters use Email too. In the thirteen most common fraud compiled by the Police, four are conducted over email. Please take a look at that webpage, so you can tell friends what are the most common cheat scheme in Hongkong.

What to do about them?

Number one, trust the offers as much as you would towards cheaters trying to sell you wonder drugs, model agency, and gold rings, as depicted in Police TV commercials. Tricks need not be new, if only they are accepted.

If you don't want to spend time to get even with these cheaters, just delete their email to end the trouble. Just like a cheater approached you on the street and you ignored them.

If you are a good netizen (network citizen) and want to do something to reduce such scam (most often from overseas) from coming into CUHK, thanks. First you need to find out who really sent it to you. Do not rely on the From: or Sender: info, because scammers know you will use them, so most such info are forged and must not be trusted.

The procedures are a bit complicated. You must use a smart email analyser (e.g. www.spamcop.net) who can read the headers of your email, analyse, and tell you which ISP the scammer used to send the scam. Then you can complain accordingly, to that ISP, and most responsible ISP (including yahoo and hotmail) will act to remove cheaters, if only enough of us take the time to complain.

The detail procedure of using www.spamcop.net has been documented at http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/itsc/howto/reportspam, please follow it if you have trouble going through spamcop.net.

Some internet users consider (perhaps correctly) that these scams are actually crime, so they actually report them to the Police, who by now are very familiar with Email scams. Email to crimeinformation@police.gov.hk if you want to do it over the net.

Last, but not least, discuss these scam with your friends, so they may not fall into these traps, and if they have good ideas how to fight email scam, please share them with us.