You may have had the same experience that I write about on the lines below. You might also know why you share it.  If you know, please tell me about it.

I get e-mail messages from sources I do not recognize.  I usually just delete them but sometimes I take a peek to see what particular ones are all about.  It seems that I am the target of personages who think the following (each one is different but sometimes I get repeats).  It is interesting to note that some people out there cast lines in the waters of the net just to see if someone bites.  They write to me to see if I am interested in becoming: 1. a teacher, 2. a machinist, 3. a reader of a masterpiece one has written, 4.  a person who has millions of dollars and wants to share it with me, 5. an orphan who needs my particular help and 6. people with a product to help me maintain an erection.  This last character is particularly persistent.  I wonder what he thinks he knows.

In speaking to others about these experiences I find that they similarly find such blind searches for a victim.  It looks to me like predators who have found a way to take advantage of people with little knowledge of the internet and a great deal of interest in looking to “live” a little.  These are the kinds who join networks and probably look for a mate for life in the e-mails which arrive unsolicited.

I am reminded of the fish and other aquatic animals that were provided by nature with a dangling worm-like appendage in front of their teeth.  They sink into the sands and show their wares and some unthinking but hungry visitor comes by and takes a chance.  The predator has advertised and his advertisement has paid off.

Most of us are reminded to buy food by pictures we see in the ads that come along with the daily newspaper. On one side this is good because we learn about what we might need.  The only trouble is that the ads, like the predator fish and the e-mails don’t arrive daily on your desktop and many are things that you would never be interested in.

This is not like the page in the NYTimes Book Review section today where notice of a book, The Numerati, is reviewed under a headline, “They’ve Got Your Number” which is about how knowledge these people have is used to track and influence other people.  I guess that is what is happening here. Predators are at work