Virtual PanHandling

Interesting article from { Kuro5hin } about { The Rise of Online Panhandling }LaNMaN2000 writes: "Recently, the internet has been plagued with a vile epidemic: online panhandling. From the woman trying to leave her husband to the car obsessed college student who is seemingly too poor to even afford his own domain name, it seems that every few days another site is launched with the same theme. These sites do not exist to entertain their visitors or satisfy a psychological need on the part of their creators; they are simply presenting a pitch designed to sell their webmasters as helpless charity cases worthy of visitors' financial support. And, it seems like the same marks who would otherwise be paying to import stolen Nigerian fortunes have embraced these sites as another way to flush their money down the proverbial commode."

Seems this kind of panhandling is geting worse owing to the numerous spammails in my inbox of late, with people relating all kinds of hardluck stories and asking for monetary help...are internet end-users perceived by many to be so gullible to fall for these scams? I wonder...