Tiger Woods' return will spark a spam attack

Brian Yoder, vice-president of engineering for the anti-virus and spyware firm CyberDefender, told me in a phone interview that his company is predicting a cyber criminal event when Tiger Woods returned to golf at the Masters this week. Why? Because celebrity names and their misdeeds provide spammers and other Internet scum the chance to play on your curiosity to convince you to respond to their e-mailings. I'm sure the sexual nature of Tiger's shortcoming will play a role in the e-mails that your spam filters will (hopefully) catch.

Yoder cautions that most scammers will try to get you to open a file containing their malware by using one of two tactics; offering to show you a video if you "open" their "video player," or by warning you that you have already contracted a virus and offering to rid your computer of it if you "click here."

The lesson? Don't click here in an e-mail, no matter how famous the celebrity and how scandalous the supposed video. In other words, you're an idiot if you click on any variation on "Tiger sex tape". In fact, even if it were the real thing, you'd still be an idiot to click on it, imho.