Gone Phishing? Don't be caught!

Having finished my daily office I clicked on my mail system only to find five copies of the same mail purporting to come from Amazon.com:

Dear Customer,

Your order has been successfully canceled. For your reference, here's a summary of your order:

You just canceled order 180-8136-8531 placed on May 12, 2012.

Status: CANCELED
_____________________________________________________________________

1 "Relativistic"; 2008, Special Edition
By: Ifor Phillips

Sold by: Amazon.com LLC
_____________________________________________________________________

Thank you for visiting Amazon.com!
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Amazon.com
Earth's Biggest Selection
http://www.amazon.com
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Knowing that I don't use Amazon.com and safe in the knowledge that although I have to hurry to make sure that I don't miss out, I have safely stored the $20,000,000 that has been left to me by a distant relative in Nigeria, I initially sighed and headed to the 'delete' button. Then I remembered a call a couple of weeks back from someone who'd opened a mail from a mutual acquaintance that had installed a variety of lovely little things on their machine and emailed all their contacts.

Can I please advise those who read this blog to avoid opening anything that looks suspicious (or comes from someone you don't know and has a header that looks odd)?

Please take care with emails and the inheritances, cancellations and wonderful free offers that abound for there are many naughty people out there looking to abuse your trust and manipulate your address books (and use your credit card detail too!).

Happy (and safe) Saturday

Parenting - it's about responsibilities

I was pleasantly unsurprised by the social worker who appeared on Radio Four this morning over the potential removal into care of four of their children from their parents because they were 'too fat'! The four children (aged 1, 3, 7 & 11)  face the situation where they will be 'fostered without contact' or 'adopted'.

Now I have to be honest and say that I do think that letting our kids become obese is an issue and that steps need to be taken (and I understand many have been) but the frightening bit in all of this (for me at least) is the comment from a supposedly aware and competent social worker that. "Parents have no rights only responsibilities!" This professional went on to add that publishing stories like this only caused people to doubt and regard social workers.

Is it any blinking wonder?

I know a goodly number of social workers who are overworked and try to ensure that the right outcome is brought into being and then I know many others who appear to be inept, out of touch and to be honest, totally incompetent (just like dogcollars) and their decisions and outcomes fill the newspapers, promote the popularity of public enquiries and keep coroners busy.

In this case it appears that the parents have worked to meet the demands of the social workers, pity the same can't be said of the professionals with regard to the family.

Pax

Back home - time for a cup of tea and then chapter (Yeeha!)