Dear Porn Afficionados

My knowledge of Swedish law is not the greatest, owing largely to my lack of being Swedish. However, I am casually acquainted with American law, owing largely to my proficiency in being American. And it seems to me that, seeing as accessing a porn site is not illegal in and of itself in the United States, it wouldn't be illegal in Sweden either. If someone tries to e-mail you saying you need to pay a fine for visiting a porn site, don't listen to it. Report it to the Internet Crime Complaint Center.

And if they try to up the ante by claiming that you've visited a child porn site and gussying themselves up to look like the government, that may in fact be the result of a computer virus. Because I would think you would probably know if you've actually visited a child porn site or not. On top of not giving into the blackmail of paying the fine, the act of doing so here would have the same end effect as you taking an e-mail from deposed Nigerian royalty seriously: some guy gets your banking account number, drains it and runs off. And then you have to go have a fascinating conversation about what just happened to all your money.

If the government thought you had child porn, they wouldn't screw around with a fine-by-e-mail. They'd just come into your house and take your whole damn hard drive to see just how much you had. They might take you too. That's not exactly the kind of crime where the cops stop at a mere fine.

Let us recap: porn site, not a crime. Child porn site, not a crime where the cops settle for fine-payment-by-e-mail. Either way, it's a scam.