I am of Irish heritage (grandfather on my father’s side came from Ireland) and although I know St. Patrick’s Day isn’t really an Irish holiday, I still like to celebrate it. My husband makes the best corned beef dinner hands down (and it gives me a break from cooking). We tend to stay home because of all the people getting a wee bit drunk and the police presence looking for drunk drivers. Do you celebrate? What do you do on St. Patrick’s Day?

This year, the holiday falls the day after the full moon, which for me means getting “tinfoil hat” cases and this weekend was no exception. As a cyber crime expert, I don’t get these very often, but when I do, they are head scratchers. Sometimes I am at a loss as to how to respond to them.

Like the following – I replied that they needed to take their electronic devices to a local computer repair company to see if a scan could be done to look for trojans, viruses, etc that may have been planted. But quite honestly, well, I think they may have more going on than what they’re saying and probably should seek professional help:

“have been getting stalked and harassed aggressively since October of13 that I am aware when I found out they became more aggressive I have a SQL and php servers on all my pc and my sons ipad and they are usingy phone the sql is from ca of Berkeley- the pages ony phone keep popping up – Microsoft , gnu -‘and today wiki as well as Creative Commons I came across smpt4deb – and nugget .commwhick this are a foreshore web sight I have been unable to connect to my normal web site for weeks and they redirect me to try and sign onto the php – they contiine to be aggressive and drive by – yestursay ( and the third time) i tries to lower my services comcast them lady refused and another states something about video boxes ( x- box) and they had an arrument in front of me about not removing something i did not order or don’t want on my account-‘I think that a an inside job- nugget. com and commen creative had a link to microsftn( they also do a wiki ) page for legal rights – tried to submit one – went no where !!! please investigare them – I am being harassed , my life has atoopped-
fraud is taking place and I can’t pay my bills, lost my insurance and these people are aggressive I think it’s a business thanks”

Then there is this one, and I gave them pretty much the same advice – to get their computer checked out. But where they write they took the hard drive out and the computers were still controlled, well, computers don’t run without hard drives, but I digress:

“An Organization from Russia Germany and India they have taken over 2 of my computers and others people they have taken over all emails and wrecked my windows I am using a linux CD and they still control my computer my phones on taped and I took out the drive and they still control the computers. I think they are trafficking women. When I find the door that opens and helps I will tell you who they are. If you email me back the chances are great they will delete it.”

I do have to admit that getting these emails give me ideas for possible stories. What gives you ideas for stories or articles you write?