D7

Eric Lewis
City Views

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Call me cynical, but anytime anyone offers me a free "anything," I'm skeptical.

Instead of being excited about e-mails offering free money or an easy no-exercise way of getting rock-hard abs and bulging biceps, I'm immediately suspicious of whatever is being offered, and my first question is usually, "What's the catch?"

Actually, scratch that. Usually I delete the e-mail without even thinking about it. If it's too good to be true, then it probably isn't true . . . right?

It's for this reason I have to wonder what the people who fall for online scams are thinking (or perhaps, why they aren't thinking in the first place). We ran a story in Monday's newspaper with the headline, "Canadians keep falling for Nigerian letter scam."

The story goes on to say that Canada's Competition Bureau is warning people that recessions are "boom times for desperate Canadians," and that an average of 10 Canadians each month continue to fall for this so-called Nigerian letter scam, which offers promises of untold millions from an African country in exchange for some simple help with a few bank transactions.

Apparently June was a "relatively slow" month for victims of the letter scam in this country, with four people reporting losses of a total of almost $73,000.

That's a slow month? Let's say they each lost the same amount of money -- that would be roughly $18,250 each. I don't know about you, but if I had nearly $20,000 to throw away, I'd be paying off my vehicle, dropping the cash onto my mortgage or maybe investing it; I wouldn't be offering it out to any joker who sends me an e-mail.

It gets worse though -- in May, 11 Canadians fell for the letter scam and were taken for a total of almost $571,000, while a U.S. victim reported they lost $200,000 in a scam with Canadian links.

I was stunned when I read this.

I get e-mails almost daily offering untold millions, body "enhancements" and warnings that "if you don't send this e-mail to everyone on your contact list, Microsoft will delete your Hotmail account."

For that last one, it always surprises me that friends and family actually forward these things to me. I guess it's easy to be fooled, especially if you're new to computer usage or the e-mails are made to look very professional (and some certainly are), but common sense has to kick in sometime, doesn't it?

If just anyone could get truckloads of money because of a silly e-mail, don't you think you'd have heard of a friend or family member that actually had this happen to them by now?

I'd love to win millions, but I'll stick to my one-in-a-million chance of winning the lottery.

l l l

Speaking of the Internet . . . a few months back, I wrote about how social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and so on are changing how we keep in touch with one another, and how for future generations, "reunions" won't have the same meaning because there will be so few people you've actually lost touch with.

Well, when I was leaving work a few weeks ago, I overheard another example of how the Internet is changing how we do things. I was walking by a woman on a cell phone who was clearly excited about whatever the topic of conversation was.

She repeated into the phone several times "O-M-G! O-M-G!" to the person on the other end of the phone (That's "Oh my God!" if you're not up on Internet-speak).

I tried to stifle my laughter until I was back in my vehicle, and luckily the woman was too far away from me and clearly too wrapped up in her pseudo-conversation to pay attention to my choked-back laughter anyway.

I'm not the first to notice the growing trend of people using Internet "language" in their day-to-day life, but it's always funny to hear new examples.

After relating this funny little anecdote to him, T&T columnist Brian Cormier later told me (over Facebook, no less) that he once heard someone laughing about something, only instead of laughing, they said "L-O-L" repeatedly (That's "laugh out loud" or "lots of laughs," depending on who you talk to, I guess).

Is the Internet slowly wiping away our language skills, one syllable at a time? Reading is a good thing, but I guess if all you are reading is text messages, the rules don't apply.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not one to blame technology and changing trends for all of society's ills. In fact, I think a lot of Internet speak comes in handy, but I generally keep it to a bare minimum in my life -- in cell phone text messages and Internet conversations.

Imagine if we at the Times & Transcript started incorporating this lovely interweb-speak into our stories.

We could cover the next HubCap Comedy Festival and say that the comedians are sure to bring lots of "LOLs" and that audiences will soon be "ROFL" (rolling on floor laughing).

If someone were to say, "If I recall correctly. . ." we could cut down on our typing and some ink by simply writing "IIRC."

I suppose then we'd also have to include a small dictionary with the newspaper each morning so everyone could translate correctly.

Maybe this isn't the best idea.

n City Views appears daily, written by various members of our staff. Eric Lewis is a reporter with the Times & Transcript. His column appears every Wednesday.