I have had Modigliani on the mind–hence the long necks.

Chris Ripley has self-published a short new book (40 pages), Leveraging Your List. The title joins Online Marketing 101 (originally published in 2011 and now in its second edition) in Ripley’s bibliography. Internet marketing has been a growing vehicle for companies looking to enhance visibility, market share and sales. Instrumental to any comprehensive Internet-marketing plan is a list of customers and prospects, and a methodology for reaching them. Presented in the form of an interview transcript, Ripley discusses how to store, segment and successfully grow your list. His intended audience is the small business owner who may not have the time or manpower to devote to online-marketing activities, and explains various methods to automate, rationalize and even outsource the contact-management process. Ripley is the Owner of the Strategic Marketing Group, headquartered in Waldorf, MD. More information is available at http://strategic-marketing-group.com.

It should be a dead giveaway when somebody phones and wants to speak to you about your Microsoft computer. If you know enough to realize that there is no such thing as a Microsoft computer, then these scammers on the other end of the line are not for you. You know better.

However, I’ve been getting these calls lately (so has my mother for that matter). The public should be made aware that there are bad folks out there who want you to turn over control of your computer to them for some sinister purpose that has nothing to do with the “Trojan worm” or whatever fictitious calamity the person who, in a distinct Indian accent, introduces himself as being from Microsoft “tech support” tells you needs to be fixed.

I have never gotten far enough into these schemes to figure out what the scammers ultimately want. Are they looking for passwords and personal information? Is the purpose to install some time-released malware whose true purpose may not be known until it is activated? All I know for certain is that nobody from Microsoft or any of the big computer manufacturers ever calls me.

With everything else the NSA does, can’t they go after these jokers? Can’t they shut them down? Isn’t every bad thing labeled terrorism these days anyway?

If you get one of these calls, it is fun to engage the caller in a discussion of condoms and the population of the Indian subcontinent. This enrages them. So does calling an Indian person a Pakistani.