If you google "online fraud", "hacking", "phishing", "telephone fraud" or similar terms, you'll be served up millions of articles.

That's because fraud is more pervasive than ever. As a result, it's easy to be oblivious to the very real dangers.
So we thought we would send out an appeal. Tell us how you have been a target. We'll share the most common and the cleverest scams in our next blogpost.

Hopefully, this will make it more real, and keep you more vigilant.

To warm you up, here are a few attempts which have targeted me. Thankfully, they were all pretty transparent, so they were almost amusing. Sadly, however, a few people targeted must have been tricked, suffering financial loss and anxiety.

• The IRS is calling because I owe them money. The facts: the IRS does not call anyone. They use the USPS.
• Our company email provider has been hacked. There was a link to click, where I would enter in my login credentials, supposedly to change them. The tip-off: hovering over the link showed a URL ending in ".kp". That's North Korean.
• Hello, we're calling from the office of Visa and Mastercard. This was my personal favorite. The office of Visa and Mastercard? Two fierce competitors? I'm waiting for a call from the office of the Republican and Democratic Parties next.
• The Social Security Administration is calling to confirm some information. Like the IRS, they don't call.

Please reply email and tell us how you have been a target. If we team up against the bad guys, we can help each other.