False Advertising

A person should be absolutely satisfied that a web site or an email or any social media posting is completely legitimate before responding to it in any way. This is because the purveyors of spam have become sophisticated enough to fool even an intelligent casual observer.

For example, I recently got an email describing an interesting job opportunity. It was from a person I didn't know—but there are many in my network I don't know yet and if they have work for me, I want to hear from them. The language of the email was only slightly off-beat—call it a yellow flag, not a red one.

When I went out on the internet I couldn't find the company. Okay, that's almost certainly a red flag—except it meant I didn't find any bad reviews. Could the company simply be new or obscure? Does every business have a web site? Well, probably, yeah, so it was a red flag. Still, I wanted to believe it was a legitimate opportunity and wasn't yet ready to hit "delete."

But the indisputable red flag was that the email appeared not to have been sent to anything resembling my email address, nor was it from any business. These days, all of the email header information can be faked, so if it isn't from a legitimate enterprise—and certainly if it appears it wasn't sent to you—it’s garbage.

I saved myself further trouble, but wasted my time in the bargain.