I've noticed some new scams making their appearance lately, "new" only in the sense that they are different from the run-of-the-mill 419's, prize pitches and money transfer scams that have been choking my inbox for the last few months. The scammers seem to have decided that it's time to get back to basics, skip all this complicated stuff with forged checks and unlikely stories about buried treasure, and just ask suckers outright for their money.

Fake charities are a popular one. The spammer behind Red Heart deserves credit for at least trying to make the site look nice. The same can not be said for savechilds.net whose owner has been sending crude image spams claiming to be a Russian children's charity. Despite sending large amounts of spam, they're probably not doing too well: anyone who is taken in by the unconvincing pitch is likely to find the zombie-hosted website unreachable.

If charities aren't your bag, how about shares in a gold mine? Land Resource Association llc will take some e-gold off your hands in exchange for shares in their imaginary venture. They promise 21.7% monthly for every share, a target they will no doubt find easy to reach given that Mined gold cost very cheap for us ... because of very cheap workers.

Of course the money transfer scammers are still out there. Viking Finance, having started in the '.info' domain, seems to be working its way through the TLD's and now has a '.com', '.net', '.org' and '.biz' to its name. And there are plenty of others as well.

Finally, there are moments when I suspect some spammers of having a sense of humor. How else do you explain the spammer whose spams claim to come from the Replica&Viagra Company, and whose pitches offer both penis pills and fake watches?