Just when you get to thinking that there’s a limit to how low people will go to make a buck, someone comes along and proves you wrong.  

There are some people out there who will actually go lower than a snake’s jockstrap in a wheel rut.  

For example, following Hurricane Katrina and the London terrorist bombings, fake charity websites popped up almost immediately, designed to scam well-meaning people out of their money.  Now, the Sans Internet Storm Center is advising that at least 25 new domain names relating to the Virginia Tech massacre have been registered, including vatechshooting.com and vtmassacre.com.  At the time of the alert, no content had been placed on the sites, and Sans officials said that legitimate organizations might be behind some of them, but there’s a good chance that others are just the work of lowlife opportunists who are getting ready to cash in on the suffering of others.  

The US Computer Emergency Response Team suggests that you be wary of charitable donation requests sent via email, since the originating sites may be scam fronts or ID theft efforts.  If you’re suspicious, you can forward the emails to the Anti-Phishing Working Group for further investigation.  

Read more at VNUNet.