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On a new category of suspcious email messages purporting to come from long-lost friends and family:

“For the sake of argument, then, let us say that I have now identified a new category of online scams. Some people will respond to this by blaming the medium. The Internet, it will be held, is not just a place where rumors spread and hackers prety, but it is also a place where dangerous scam artists guilt-trip their way into people’s homes. It’s important how we respond to such ideas. One tendency is denial: this is the approach of many Internet defenders, who also belittle the whole idea of pedophiles and pornography online. Another tendency is essentialism: talking as if the Internet as such, by its nature, ahistorically, is a place of rumors and hacking and scams.”

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