Have you ever wondered if an e-mail you have received is the truth or a scam?  For example, are there really organ thieves out there stealing peoples' kidneys.  Have you recently won a foreign lottery you don't remember entering?  Is the IRS really paying people to take their on-line survey?  Or, are students who take the SAT really awarded 200 points for spelling their names correctly?

With the barrage of e-mails we receive every day, it's difficult to tell which ones are true and which are a waste of disk space.  Some of them give us a good laugh, while others can actually be used against us.

In the case of the Nigerian scam (and there are many variations of it), you receive an e-mail from a wealthy dignitary, government official or family member of such who needs help moving money from their country to an American bank.  For your assistance, you are promised a hefty percentage.  This is actually a real and dangerous fraud that has duped people out of thousands and hundreds of thousands of dollars.  It plays on peoples' "get something for nothing" mentality.

Perhaps you have received an e-mail from your financial institution or credit card company indicating "unusual activity" on your account and the need for you to log in and unlock it.  Or, a request to re-verify your information.  This is a phishing scam intended to steal your personal, non-public information, which can lead to identify theft.

A good rule of thumb is, if you did not initiate contact with your financial institution, do not reply to an e-mail (or even a phone call) until you verify it is legitimate.  Credit cards and banks will NEVER ask for your personal information via e-mail.

Before you act on, forward or even believe something you receive by e-mail, check out http://www.snopes.com/.  Snopes covers the latest scams, urban legends, fallacies, misinformation, old wives' tales, strange news stories, rumors, celebrity gossip and similar items being propagated through e-mail.  Not only will you be wiser, but friends and family will thank you for not clogging up their in-boxes with false information.

Please visit my website and blog at www.FindHomesInCharlottesville.com for information on housing and demographics in Charlottesville, VA, as well as helpful information on a variety of topics.