Beware of scams on deliveries.

• Position: Christmas Packages

Beware of phony package notifications: 'tis the season for phony emails that deliver nothing but trouble, warns the AARP Bulletin. Along with holiday decorations and lights, FedEx, UPS, and DHL trucks adorn American streets at this time of the year, and that provides the perfect opportunity for scammers to deliver fake notifications that there Is a package waiting for you.

In the most common ploy, an e-mail purporting to be from a well-known courier service--or even the U.S. Postal Service--contains a link that supposedly will bring up information about a package that cannot be delivered or that will let you print a copy of the delivery order.

If you click on the link, you may download any of a number of malicious Trojan computer infections. Some slow your computer's performance and trigger phony security alerts, followed by pop-up offers to sell you fake antivirus protection--what Is known as scareware. Others are far more dangerous, unleashing keystroke loggers that allow the hackers who sent the mail to capture your passwords and online banking and credit card information.

A newer version of the delivery ruse, which recently triggered a warning by Binghamton, N.Y., police, are e-mails that make the same phony claim of an en route package, but with a request that you purchase insurance on it, via a credit card or money order. "Once citizens give their credit card number," police say...