Internet Scams

Over the years, I have seen some interesting internet scams. I'm sure you have, too. The past couple of days, someone claiming to be with the "Department of Asian Domain Registration in China" has been trying to get me to answer an email. I've copied it here for your amusement:

Dear Sir/Madam,
About the "immanuelsouthern". We are the department of Asian Domain Registration Service in China. Here I have something to confirm with you. We formally received an application on November 20th, 2014 that a company claimed "CriTony Company" were applying to register "immanuelsouthern" as their Net Brand and some "immanuelsouthern" Asian countries top-level domain names through our firm.
Now we are handling this registration, and after our initial checking, we found the name were similar to your company's, so we need to check with you whether your company has authorized that company to register these names. If you authorized this, we would finish the registration at once. If you did not authorize, please let us know within 7 workdays, so that we could handle this issue better. After the deadline we will unconditionally finish the registration for "CriTony Company" Looking forward to your prompt reply.
(It's very urgent, so please transfer this email to your CEO or appropriate person. Thanks a lot.)  
Best Regards,
Luke Yang
Senior Adviser Manager

Whether or not this is a scammer from China or Nigeria, it really doesn't matter to me.

What does matter to me is the audacity of con artists. I see news stories of people conned out of thousands of dollars. I've seen my own family and friends fall victim to such treachery.

Treachery? Yes. Treachery. The word "con artist" comes from the way a person gains another person's confidence in order to use that trust for unlawful gain.

A couple of years ago, I scammed a scammer and had a whole lot of fun doing it. You can read about it here. In fact, it has been one of my favorite posts here at RickBoyne.com

Con artists and scammers are like the devil in many respects. Satan will gain your confidence, or at least get you to listen to him, and then BAM! take something away from you.

The Bible says that the devil is like a roaring lion; roaming around looking for someone to devour.  (1 Peter 5:8) It warns us to be alert; be on guard.

We should always be on the alert when it comes to anything out of the ordinary with requests from the internet. If you aren't sure about something, don't just automatically respond to it. If you get a "pop up" on your computer screen, don't just automatically put in your username and password, either. Ask someone. Get someone else's help.

Just like dealing with the devil. No need to try to go it alone; you've got a friend in Jesus!

You do, don't you? That is, you are friend with Jesus, right?  If you aren't, I'd suggest you make friends with Jesus real quick. I guarantee you want to be on HIS side when it's all said and done.  There is a link at the top right hand part of this blog that says, "Do You Know Jesus?" Click on that or right here and it will take you to another link I created just for the purpose of your making friends with Jesus.

And that's no scam!