"The same thing happens with emails that appear to be from Bank One, US Bank, Citibank, Smith Barney, and others, no doubt. If you check the websites of these companies, they contain alerts about the problem.

No one should directly answer this type of message. If you do not have an account, ignore it. If you do have an account with them, contact them in a usual way, if you're concerned, but do NOT answer that email message. It may look legit, using the company's actual logo, but it goes somewhere else.

Bill"

Bill is absolutely right on!!! I just want to point out that his is only a partial list. I couldn't begin to list the fraud "your account" messages from any number of financial institutions, some of which I've heard of, some not, I get. And, that's just the ones that get past the Spam watch.

The first one I saw had me worried, since it was from a bank I had once had a credit card with (long since abandoned), and I was scared someone had actually stolen the account. I still worry about that, but won't open any of these emails.

(I still own shares in Wave Systems, which was the pioneer in developing truly secure on-line transactions, using hardware. Things are moving in that direction, which should be much safer, but it is taking a long, long time—unfortunately, I doubt Wave shareholders will benefit when, eventually, some version of the Wave paradigm gets adopted, probably proving a classic case for investors on how first movers who get way ahead of demand for their product get left in the trash heap of innovation history,)