Spammers are clever. Well, occasionally, anyway. Among the obvious spam message titles like "Show the world the giant you've been hiding" and "you are so good to me eggplant mike" are the ones that touch on the hot topics of today. I mentioned the Valentine's Day spam the other day, where the subject line suggests that you have an e-card sent by your lover. Wait a minute, let's check something:

Please tell me you're not clicking any of these! What have your mother and I been trying to tell you? You need to avoid these types of messages. That forwarded email joke might be hilarious, but you don't know where it's been, and it just might have been infected with a computer virus from the start. Use caution and use protection, that's what I say! Now before this turns into a high school health class, let's continue....

So the current topical spam scam is tax refund phishing and other IRS-related spam. You receive a message that appears to be from the IRS, telling you about a previous year's refund or asking for additional information to help you avoid an audit. These messages often have the IRS logo included and sound very official, but the IRS never offers refunds by email and never sends unsolicited email to any taxpayer. The email asks you to submit personal information to confirm the refund or other tax-related activity, but the information is sent to the spammer instead, who can then use it to steal your identity, access bank accounts, and more.

I haven't seen any reports of a potential variation on this phishing attempt, but I wouldn't be surprised to see some sort of official-looking email from the U.S. Government, perhaps the IRS again, looking to confirm information in order to send the proposed tax rebates to Americans later this spring. If you see something like that, keep today's story in mind and, as we like to say... don't be a sucker.

Today's statistics from MessageLabs show spam making up over 50 percent of all incoming email, though the rate peaked over last weekend nearer to 70 percent. Even more of a concern is the increase in malicious spam, those unwanted messages that have content or attachments that contain various forms of malware, like viruses, trojan horses, or attempts to obtain personal information through phishing. The virus rate has averaged 0.7 percent for the last week, with phishing attempts running at about 0.4 percent.