This mornings snail mail contained a large brown envelope. And that was it. One large envelope from one of the banks I deal with.

I sliced open the envelope with a letter opener. An instrument rarely used in 2026! Mainly because rarely does the post person aboard her or his electric vehicle deposit mail in my letter box.

I thought this communication might be relating to investment information. How wrong could I be.

Out popped a booklet titled "The Little Book of Scams". "How to spot and avoid scams". Thirty three pages long, and providing a synopsis of more scams than I knew existed.

My friends, this is how far our world has sunk in a relatively short time thanks to the wonders of the internet!

Never during my lifetime has my bank previously sent me a booklet warning me of a multitude of scary criminal activities specifically designed to catch me offguard to steal my financial assets!

Not to be outdone, in the inbox of my email, was another scary communication. This time a document from a government organisation titled "New Scam Alert"! "Criminals gaining control of your mobile phone by taking over your email system", etc, etc.

Of course, as we all know only too well, this is not new. The crims have been super active for years now and surging ahead with great and frightening illegal vigour.

If the best our government, banks, police, etc, can do is to continue to place the onus on you and me to watch our P's and Q's instead of them PREVENTING this ever growing avalanche of scams then we are LOST!

Maybe the safest approach will be for me to cease my online banking and payments and eliminate doing ANY financial transactions online.

H'mmm hang about! That's not so simple at this late date, is it? The banks convinced us to do our biz online. Created the perfect storm for crims to attack our online assets, then substantially shut up shop!

It's a huge concern! You be extra careful out there!

Cheers Ross