Low-tech Internet Scams Harvest Billions Of Dollars

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- For decades, Internet scams have been as numerous as they've been easy to spot -- but fraudsters' tools and tricks are now becoming more sophisticated.

Those poorly written spam e-mails often seem more annoying than threatening, but they can wreak financial havoc on their victims. Precise statistics are hard to pin down, but experts believe global Internet fraud scams people out of hundreds of millions to billions of dollars each year.

Internet fraudsters have traditionallypreyed on the vulnerable, including older victims who aren't as well-versed in computer technology. But scammers' skills at deception have improved so greatly over the years that even seasoned Internet users often have to do a double-take before they realize they've been duped.

For instance, a widely used, relatively new scheme that's difficult to detect features pop-up notifications that look just like antivirus software alerts. They usually say something to the effect of, "Your computer has been infected with 49 viruses, click OK to quarantine them."

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