In the midst of writing my editorial for the January/February 2006 issue of ONLINE (which is a terrific issue, by the way, with articles on XML, ethics, content management, Web resources for teachers, wayfinding, intranets, and a whole lot more), I checked my email. One spam message stood out. It said “Our University Enrollment department has been trying to contact you. The date for enrolling in our 2 week degree program is ending on
Friday, November 18th, 2005. As of now we can only 0ffer you a BA, BSc, or a MA.
If you enroll by the due date then your degree of choice and transcripts
can be sent to you within 2 weeks.”

Never mind that it was sent after Nov 18th, so even if it was legit (getting a degree in 2 weeks is obviously legit, right?), it would have been too late, but it was sent from the domain name “bandito.com”! Yes, of course, I’m going to respond to the banditos! Could they any more plainly tell me that they’re crooks?