Here at the Nashua Telegraph, we’ve all been getting oddly-worded e-mails recently from people in the UK or other unlikely places who want to place a classified ad about their dog. (One that I got was signed "Revered John Smith" - honest.)

It’s a variant of the old Nigerian e-mail scam, says Cheryl Roberts, the paper’s Classified Manager, who talked to police about it. And we’re not alone - at a recent national conference of newspaper classified advertising managers, she said, "That’s all anybody was talking about. … Everybody’s being bombarded."

As you might expect, she said, if you respond you get a request for your bank and/or credit card information to reserve the cute little pooch. We all know what happens then!

The paper is blocking the e-mails coming through the classified-ad portal, but the scammers have scraped public email addresses and are sending notices directly to reporters, editors and others. What a pain …