"I am old and [too] seriously ill to fight for the truth," the message reads. "I hope you are the person who will help me reach my goal. It will bring you fame. Calmness for me."

If you haven't guessed by now, this is the latest in a series of e-mail scams. And if you hadn't guessed that by now — and I'll try to be kind here — perhaps you shouldn't be trusted with your own credit card or checking account.

This isn't always clear. The first time most of us ever received a "Nigerian Scam" we gave it a second thought, if we did not click through.

And the first time "our" bank wrote and asked to confirm an account number, we may have been fooled for a minute or two. But after five years, anyone who doesn't live in a padded cell has to know these deals aren't for real.

Common wisdom tells us that as long as just one person responds for every 100,000 scam letters, it is worthwhile for the perpetrator.

Perhaps 1/100,000th of the online population has just walked out of a padded cell somewhere and signed up for an e-mail account. I shouldn't be too flip here, because if you are mentally fragile and someone steals your money it could force you over the edge.

You can't really blame the anti-virus/anti-spam merchants for alerting us to the danger (in this case the warning comes from a company called Sophos). Their stockholders need to know they are doing something, and a press release does the trick.

And they need to indicate to their customers that they are actually awake. Even so, it is a little like a smoke-detector company putting out a release informing us that their little lights continue to flash in homes around the globe. Yes, it's working. But we don't need to know about it.

So there comes a time where we need to grow up and take a certain amount of responsibility for our actions.

When someone you have never heard of writes and makes an outlandish offer, it is a scam.

Similarly, if you cross the street on a red light, you could get hit by a car. You don't drink from the toilet bowl, or run with scissors.

And you can tell when something is a scam, without a press release.

If you have questions or suggestions for Charles Bermant, you can contact him by e-mail at cbermant@seattletimes.com.

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