BOSTON -- With 100 million accounts breached at Sony and hundreds of thousands exposed at Massachusetts unemployment offices, who knows where online scammers will strike next?

The best defense, experts say, is a good offense.

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NewsCenter 5's Randy Price looked at the top three scams that are putting the public at risk right now, starting with the recent wholesale theft of email addresses.

"It's no longer just coming over the telephone or coming in your physical mail. The online scams are rampant," said Edgar Dworsky of www.consumerworld.org.

Dworsky said one way people are getting scammed is through phishing scams through the recent thefts of millions of email addresses. Many of the scam email addresses are are sent using a victim's name, making them seem more legitimate than "Dear customer," Dworsky said.

But an inquiry from what may seem to be a consumer's bank or other accounts asking for confirmation of personal information amounts to identity theft and access to consumer's personal accounts later.

"No legitimate bank is going to send you that type of email. And even though it looks legitimate and their logo is there, if you take your mouse and hover over the link and look on the status line, it doesn't really go to (the bank), it goes somewhere else. That's the clue," said Dworsky.

Another scam comes through fake news sites selling Acai berries and other diet products. Ten of them, one that looks like a news site, were recently shut down by the Federal Trade Commission.

On one, a video by a supposed journalist is really a performance by an actress.

"It's all fake. The product is not going to help you lose 25 pounds in four weeks," Dworsky said.

A third scam involves an email SOS, which even Dworsky got from what appeared to be a journalist friend of his. It read, "I was held up at gunpoint. All the money was taken. We don't have any way to get home."

He discovered in a quick call to the friend that it wasn't true. The money he would have wired to the friend overseas would have been gone for good.

Some vulnerable people have responded to those email SOS's that seem to be from someone in the family but Dworsky advises consumers against responding, saying it's better to notify your friend or loved one that someone has stolen their email account.