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For the months of May to July, most taxpayers in the US are looking eagerly for that one thing in the mail. That will be the Economic Stimulus Payment checks from Uncle Sam, providing extra spending cash in the pockets. Hence this is a busy time for the IRS working to send out the checks. There is another party who are also busy around this time. These are the people who are looking for ways to enjoy your piece of pie, even as IRS puts it in your hands. A unsolicited scam email has been circulating on the Internet claiming to be from the IRS. For an unsuspecting reader, this email has every appearance of coming from the IRS, complete with logos and all. Of course, if you are not from the US, you will probably suspect that it is fake. But for those in the US who are not informed enough and sometimes downright naive, they could become victim to such Internet fraud.

It is an easy thing to get into a false sense of security when it comes to your computer. Even for a techie guy like myself. I have a well known antivirus software installed on my PC and have always kept the virus definition files up to date. That should keep me reasonably protected. I said "reasonably" because no computer is 100% safe or immune. That is until the dark force strikes.

This particular day I noticed my Windows PC was running somewhat slower than usual. That usually is a give away that your computer has picked up something undesirable. Then other strange thing started to happen. Browser windows started popping up with warning that I need this or that software. File browser windows closed suddenly when they were not meant to. And my Internet browser seem to freeze for a couple of minutes. This definitely calls for drastic action. The first thing I did was starting up my Spybot Search & Destroy software and did a scan on my computer files.