Well to be fair, the scam charity industry is pretty big. My dad actually considers all calls he gets from firemen association, cancer charity foundations, etc.

Well to be fair, the scam charity industry is pretty big. My dad actually considers all calls he gets from firemen association, cancer charity foundations, etc. soliciting donations to be scams... and I think that's a good move on his part. Because he's been had before by a scam that was claiming to be a charity fund for 9/11 victims. Just the other day he asked me about an e-mail he had gotten... about this guy who's wanting a business partner. I saw in the sentbox a heartfelt reply to help him out... and that bothered me very much, that my dad is wasting time on that shit (something that was clearly a scam). I'd rather that he just stop worrying about this, I've told him point-blank to just never donate anything to any entity -- he's old, there are lots of fraudsters out there, and he doesn't have the ability to check which ones are legitimate. I'll do the donating for him with my money. You're a security professional, you have a very highly developed and sophisticated ability to discern scams from non-scams. Normal people are not like this, scam charities are actually a big problem that they have to watch out for. That is just the sad reality.