Like many of you, my family and I are praying for the victims of the recent events in Japan. Unfortunately, when events like this happen, a crop of scams usually pop up. I think this post from Slashdot says it best:

Prepare For Massive Wave of Earthquake Scams

Posted by Soulskill on Friday March 11, @11:43AM
from the i-see-what-you-did-there dept.
wiredmikey sends this quote from Security Week:“Today’s tragic events of the 8.9 magnitude earthquake and resulting tsunami, as sad as it is, is a dream for scammers and fraudsters around the world. Tragic events are always something scammers use to their advantage, helping them prey on and exploit innocent victims. Scams are already spreading across Facebook, which started in a matter of minutes after the news broke of the earthquake in Japan. As I write this, scammers are hard at work, registering new domains and cranking out templates for their fake donation sites. This will be followed with massive volumes of email spam, Tweets through Twitter, and Facebook posts, as scammers gear up to solicit donations from around the world.”As coverage of the earthquake and resulting tsunami has proceeded, collections of videos and pictures are showing the extent of the devastation. The NY Times makes the excellent point that things could have been much worse if not for building codes and quake-resistant engineering. A state of emergency was declared at one of Japan’s nuclear plants, after the earthquakecaused cooling problems at one of the reactors. No radiation leakage has been reported, and the US Air Force has helped bydelivering coolant by air.

If you choose to contribute to the recovery effort, I encourage you to contribute directly to the American Red Cross.