How the Internet is going to ruin your life. Example No. 21.

Apparently a new scam is making its way across the country, once again using email. This latest example popped up in Steuben County just a few days ago.

Steuben County Sheriff Tim Troyer announced that the bogus email appears as if it comes from the state police in New York, and it advises the recipient they have an unpaid speeding ticket issued a few months ago.

The recipient is instructed to print out a copy of the ticket and an accompanying form and mail it to a small-town court, entering a plea.

Troyer became aware of it when a Steuben County resident brought a copy of the email to the sheriff’s department asking whether it was real. Troyer quickly determined it was a scam and put out an alert. He has no idea how many other people have received the same email.

The scam, though, is an unusual one. It doesn’t name a specific city where the paperwork should be sent, and it doesn’t ask for a specific amount of money.

A television station in Watertown, N.Y., did a story three months ago about a nationwide email scam that was being investigated by the New York State Police. It said the email, which contained an attachment that told recipients they had an unpaid ticket, was infected with an unknown computer virus, which was being studied by the police.

The email is certainly designed to get people’s attention. People occasionally get notices that they have unpaid fines for various offenses, some from out of state, some that are years old.

In some cases, the mailed notices claim that the county in question has no proof that a ticket was paid, and it demands payment unless the person who got the ticket can produce a receipt showing they paid the fine. If they don’t, the county threatens to ask Indiana to suspend their license. Those letters appear to be legitimate.

Other people have received letters demanding they pay fines for failing to pay tolls. That became a problem for Hoosiers because at one point Indiana actually used the same license plate numbers on several different plates, depending on whether it was for a car, truck, trailer or motor home. Those letters were also legitimate, though they were often going to the wrong people.

This email, though, which is going only to people with Yahoo.com email addresses, is definitely a scam, Troyer said.

Its purpose is murky, though. Is it an attempt to infect various computers with viruses and turn them into what are known as bots?

Or is the plan to have the targets actually mail paperwork to a nonexistent court at some post office box in New York? If that’s the plan, the con artists would know that those who respond are real “fish” who think the ticket is real and would probably pay good money rather than travel all the way to New York to contest a ticket.

Troyer said there’s an easy way to determine that these traffic ticket emails are bogus.

How would any court or police agency know your email address, he asks? Police don’t ask for an email address when you get a ticket. No one asks for it when you get a driver’s license. Police, courts and motor vehicle bureaus don’t communicate with people through email anyway. All communication is done through the U.S. mail.

So if you happen to get what appears to be a traffic ticket notification on your computer, just kill it – without opening any attachments that might have viruses.