Like winter colds and successful marketing, Identity Theft has become almost viral. Identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in the United States, affecting 1,000,000 people annually at a cost of $6 Billion.

In a long line of similar, relatively unsophisticated scams (that go back as far as 1997), thousands of email users have been duped into willingly parting with confidential data including credit card numbers and passwords.

Con artists pretending to be legitimate companies often send out scam e-mails that tell recipients someone has tampered with their account or that some unspecified fraud is suspected. The e-mail tells the recipient to click on a link leading to a site where visitors can enter or change their username and password and update their personal information.