Spam, the wonderful meat in a can that is inexpensive yet tasty, is seeing its sales increase, according to a recent story in The New York Times. Blame the economy, where diners are looking for cheap ways to put meat on the kitchen table. Or on the restaurant table.

Other thrifty foods that are selling well across the country, many of which will fill you up, according to the Times story, include rice, beans, macaroni and cheese, pancake mixes, instant potatoes, Jell-O, Kool-Aid, fruit and vegetable preservatives, and beer.

At the Hormel Foods Corp. plant in Austin, Minn., two shifts of workers have been making Spam seven days a week since July, and they've been told the busy work schedule will continue indefinitely.

Financial crisis and scams go together as well as peanut butter and jelly. These scams have been around longer than the Internet, which is hardly the first technology used by con artists. During the Great Depression the use of telegrams to pitch "investment" offers to wealthy Northerners exploded.

It seems the more things change, the more they stay the same. Microsoft reports that email scams are on the rise as unscrupulous individuals try to capitalize on these uncertain times. Tim Cranton, an Internet Safety Expert at Microsoft, recently told Reuters that email scams are not only more sophisticated but they are also taking advantage of the public's fears surrounding bank closings and mortgage issues.

On top of these new scams which related to current events, there are also plenty of email scams which prey upon our desire to get rich quick. These scams often require users to pay a fee in order to claim the winnings of a foreign lottery. In case you didn't see where this is going; the winnings never arrive.

The common worry is that consumers, desperate for money to support themselves, will set aside good judgment and send what little money they do have to these scammers. Most of us don't think we would ever fall for an email scam but a recent survey from Microsoft found that 25% of competent computer users are worried that they will get taken by one of these well-crafted cons!

Keep this in mind as you gather for Thanksgiving in the coming weeks; make sure you tell your relatives to watch out for emails that seem too good to be true or purport to save them money on their mortgage. In fact you can click the "Email this" link below to send this article directly to your friends and family. Keep your money safe and don't respond to email solicitations that you have even the smallest doubt about. You can learn more about email scams and how to protect yourself at Microsoft's Security at Home section.

I rarely read the spam that comes my way, but every once in awhile, I'll look at a few of them, just out of morbid curiosity. I don't click on links, of course.

And something struck me about the most recent email that has offered to make me rich beyond my wildest dreams. It was familiar enough. It came from some poor lady in South Africa whose rich husband was murdered by some political thugs, and if only I could let her wire all of that money of hers into my bank account for her to get later, I'd get a cut of her $12 million. Something like that. I didn't look at it for long. But what jumped out at me was how this woman said she had reached me:

I got your contact through network online hence decided to write you.

Sure, the sentence construction is poor, but the two words that caught my attention were, "Network online." Obviously, this spammer is thinking of Facebook, MySpace or some other online network. At least I assume so. And it just made me think that as unsophisticated as this letter was, it was slightly more sophisticated than in the past, where I would receive these letters from people who didn't really explain how they found me.

And while it may seem like nobody should be falling for this sort of thing in 2008, in 2007, $3.2 billion dollars were lost to these sorts of emails -- phishing -- in the United States.

Sales of Spam are up as the inexpensive "meat product" is looking good to shoppers on a budget. It's easy to make fun of Spam. After all, it's meat that comes in a can. A can! And it's always had a reputation for being a low-end meal item. But I have fond memories of eating Spam as a kid, and we never turned our noses up at it.

With food costs on the rise, shoppers are buying more Spam in the recent months. Industry experts say the reason is simple: Spam and low-cost lunch meats are being eaten a couple of times a week instead of more expensive meat products in an effort to save money on the grocery bill.

U.S. food prices rose 4% last year and are on pace to rise 6% this year. And while the price of Spam is up 7% in the last year, it's still a cheaper alternative than many other meats. And because the canned meat keeps well in the cupboard, it's also convenient.

Spam's been around since 1937, and it looks to be going strong. Maybe now is the time for you to invest in a Spam cookbook? After all... if more households are going to be buying Spam for at least the near future, it might be worthwhile to get creative with this "other" meat.

Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud.

Just when you finished setting up the final Viagra and ED related keyword filters on your inbox, the scamming spammers have found a new ruse to part fools with their money. The new scam claims to offer a discount of 70 cents on each gallon of gas and originate for now anyway, from an individual representing himself as "Gas Saver." According to McAfee, a security and anti-virus company, in terms of volume gas related spam is still relatively low, but it has the potential to skyrocket over the summer in tandem with gas prices.

Next time you sit down with a friend or relative, do your part; remind them that they shouldn't purchase medication, gas or lottery winnings from an email. It seems to have been said again and again but just like the MPAA and the RIAA run their public service announcements before movies; maybe we need to have an announcement before sending money from your bank to another account. Remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, especially when it comes to reduced gas prices.

I truly wonder how many times local news stations and papers need to run the story of an individual scammed out of their life savings due to an email that touted a too-good-to-be-true scheme. At the very least, it seems these email-armed con men are on the ball when it comes to identifying consumer needs, or perceived needs anyway. I hear later this year they are coming out with a reprinted version of Dante's Inferno which has been updated to include a new circle of hell specifically for spammers. Until then, be sure to check out how to get gas for $2.99 a gallon for the next three years legitimately.

Several days ago, the 30th anniversary of spam came and went.

We're talking email, and not Spam, the food product. Anyway, I looked at quite a few articles that ran on the day of the anniversary May 3 or around then, like this story that originally appeared in The Washington Post, and I can't find any that quoted the man who began it all, Gary Thuerk. I was particularly interested in what he might have to say because I was lucky enough to interview him for Entrepreneur magazine during the 25th anniversary of spam.

At the time, I was getting more spam than I ever had in my life. I get a lot now, but in 2003, I was bombarded, and my computer was riddled with viruses and Trojan horses and other fun things. So when I was assigned to interview Thuerk, I had a lot of choice words prepared for him. I was going to light into him like a barbecue. I couldn't wait to pummel him with my gratitude for what he did on May 3, 1978, which is to be the first to send an unprompted email to a small but select number of people who had email, and he tried to sell these elite computer users, naturally, a new type of computer. I admit I wasn't thinking like a professional, but had made this personal. I wanted to do my best 60 Minutes Mike Wallace impression, and for Thuerk to fold like a house of cards and apologize for unleashing such a rotten practice into the world.

I recently received a message from Reunion.com that looked like it was from a former employee who was searching for me on the site. Weird. Why would she look for me on a site targeted toward high school classmates? We grew up a country apart from each other.

Then I heard about the mess on a message board I frequent, and now the LA Times is writing about it... Reunion.com has found a sneaky way to email everyone in your address book without your permission.

The game goes like this: You get a message saying Bob Jones was looking for you at Reunion.com and you're supposed to visit the site to see who else has been searching for you. Once you get to the site, you're prompted to sign up for a free account. After you sign up, you receive a message like this: "We'll find your friends and family who are already members and also automatically invite any nonmembers to join (it's free!)."