A New York man has petitioned the court to open a class action lawsuit against antivirus vendor Symantec over claims the vendor has not complied with previous court orders regarding the automatic renewal of antivirus software. Gregg Keizer of ComputerWorld reports on the latest lawsuit.

Weigh in: is Auto-Renewal of Antivirus Software a good or a bad thing?

The virtual ink on my post "Scammsers Love This Time of Year" had barely dried when I found this dating scam example in my junk mail folder:

Hello. My name is Anna. I am 25 years old.
My friend gave me your information and your e-mail address. They have been communicating online with a man who gave my friend your information and your e-mail address. She said that you are looking for relationships online, and want to get acquainted with the girl. I decided to write to you to know you better.

"Anna" then goes on to describe "herself". She claims to be a nurse:

From childhood I dreamed to work and help people and now my dream has come true.

"She" also claims to be athletic, "healthy and beautiful", "cheerful and sociable". Anna also claims to be single and looking:

I am looking for strong, long relationship. I'm serious in my choice. I can give a man all of what he wants to give her love and tenderness, I want to love and be loved - I think that is the desire of any girl. I hope that one day we will try to realize our dreams together. I think that our acquaintance will bring us many enjoyable moments, and we can meet one day. I would be happy to have a friend like you and I hope that our friendship will be continued.
I know several languages and can speak English and Russian.
I send you my picture. I hope you like it in my next letter I send you other my photo, and now I ask you to write me.

In addition to speaking English and Russian, Anna speaks fluent scam-ese. And what Anna really wants is a sucker to send her cash.

Valentine's Day is approaching, which means not only love is in the air - there will likely be increases in online dating scams as well. It's also tax season in the U.S. which means fraudsters will be out in full force, trying to trick consumers into falling for the ubiquitous IRS tax refund scams.

With a little common sense, both scams should be easy to avoid.

If your lovely foreign pen-pal claims she needs $$$ for plane tickets, custom officials, or any other reason, run - don't walk - to the nearest Close button in your email client. If not, you will likely find yourself saying farewell to your hard earned cash and there won't be a fond hello waiting from your alleged foreign beauty. Chances are, the person at the other end of the dating scam is a scraggly beefy rip-off artist.

And if the IRS sends you an email claiming you have an unclaimed tax refund, don't reply to that email or click any links provided. Remember, the IRS is an official government institution and legalities alone would preclude them from notifying customers of sensitive tax information via email. If you still believe it's legit, pickup the phone and use the yellow pages to contact your local IRS office to verify.

Spamdexing is a method used to inflate the search engine rankings of a particular page, generally for malicious or unethical purposes. Attackers modify pages on legitimate sites to contain keyword-rich links to promote the sites of their choosing. Because the search engine will rank the links based on the popularity of the compromised site, spamdexing can often result in malicious links appearing at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs).

Spamdexers tend to favor .edu sites for their spamdexing campaigns, and it seems that many .edu site admins don't seem to care. When RSnake of ha.ckers.org tried to reach out to some of those admins and notify them of the problem, they either didn't respond or accused him of ambulance chasing. His blog post, ".EDU Hacks and Ambulance Chasing", provides some example searches that reveal just how widespread the problem is.

Before you proceed to try any of those searches, it's probably worth noting here that the majority of online pharmaceuticals are likely to be counterfeit pills that at best do nothing and at worst can cause real physical harm.