“I got a call once from a real nice lady wanting me to donate to some charity in Africa. I told her I was fixin’ to cook me up a mess of beans and hung up.” Satisfied, she crossed her arms over her chest. “I donate to my church and nothing else. If there’s a worthwhile charity needs givin’ to in Africa, they’ll take care of it.”

“You were smart to hang up,” Marsha Shortell replied. “There are plenty of fake charities out there, and these people are skilled at playing on our sympathy.”

“Yeh, like an e-mail I got the other day from some guy with a name I couldn’t pronounce with a sob story about some child,” a man in the middle row said. “I deleted that one fast.”

“I had a whole heap of e-mails one time claiming to be from a bank, a credit card company, and a phone company I never did hear of,” a man in overalls said. “I’d read somewhere that legitimate companies don’t ask for personal information in an e-mail, and these folks did, so I deleted ’em.”

“Very wise of you. How many of you use computers?” the attorney asked.

More than half of the people in the room raised their hands.

“We all have to be so careful. If an e-mail arrives from someplace or someone that you aren’t familiar with, it’s best to delete it. I know that’s hard. It’s tempting to open it, but don’t. I can’t stress this too strongly. Never open an e-mail you can’t identify. Even opening one of them and immediately deleting it could expose you to a computer virus or get your name and e-mail on a long list other scammers would use. When you delete enough times, chances are those particular scammers or annoying salesmen will move on to someone else.”

“Except those guys who want to sell dish television,” someone said, and everyone laughed.

The attorney continued. “And those door-to-door encyclopedia salespeople. You need to resist their sales pitch. Every school and library has encyclopedias. Many of your grandkids have computers, and there are encyclopedias online for them to use.”

Before she could continue, someone muttered to her neighbor, “I done that. I bought me a fancy set of encyclopedias and Jamie, my granddaughter, never did open not one of those books. I paid on them for three years.”

“You’re not alone. It’s hard to resist something we think will help our children or grandchildren, isn’t it?” the attorney said.

Heads nodded.

“And that’s exactly what those scammers and salespeople rely on.” Marsha Shortell picked up an armful of papers from the table and walked down the center aisle, handing stacks to be passed along, until Denny took the papers and continued to distribute them.