Watch out for these evil April first jokes

You reach your hand out to shake your friend's hand, and upon pressing palms you get a nice, annoying, ZAP. The jolt up your arm drives you nuts. He did it again, pulled what seems like the 100th practical joke since you've known him. It's none stop, he does it all time, he's like a 12 year old. Well, lucky for you he's still into these lame physical practical jokes. Practical jokesters have become a lot more sophisticated in the past decade, the jokes are considerably more clever. If you've got a friend who is constantly out to embarrass you, you better hope that they don't know much about computers.

The list of possibilities is endless, and with April Fool's around the corner, it's best to learn about some of the most used online jokes that your friend could use to ruin your first day of April. One of the worst practical jokes that has been flooding the Internet has to do with dating sites. Ever since the first dating site showed itself to the online world, practical jokers started to salivate. These jokers love to fool with your heart. There are two main jokes that you need to watch out for. The first one involves making a profile for you on a dating site, without you having any idea. How do they do this? Well, if they have a picture of you, and with digital cameras this is pretty likely these days, they just take a picture and post it up on a dating site. Then they create a profile for you. They fill in all your information, most usually fake and unflattering information, and then they sit and wait for interested singles to start sending you e-mails. When they receive e-mails from interested parties, they usually decide to show you all the suitors you have acquired, and they get a good laugh.

The other way of using the online dating joke is to contact you as a potential mate if you already have a profile. All your friend does is find a picture of a good looking person on the Internet, create a fake profile, and then contact you, stringing you along until they decide to stop. Not pleasant, be careful. Clever practical jokers will try a million variations of the interested mate trick; they will use instant messaging programs to contact you as a mysterious co-worker, or they may actually leave you little secret admirer notes all around your desk. And don't expect a seasoned practical joker to pull their tricks on April 1st. They know you'll be tipped off on that day, they usually like to wait until the day after, or the really good ones do it the day before. Keep your guard up. But the dating jokes aren't the worst. Practical jokers love to mess with your heart, but they love to mess with your wallet even more.

Two of the most horrible practical jokes being pulled these days involve money, more specifically, making you think you just came into a small fortune. The first one involves sending you a fake, very real looking, lottery ticket. They send them for sums that are large, say 800,000 dollars, but not tickets in the millions. They know this way it looks more realistic and they can really toy with you. Don't fall for it. The second money trick is the most successful, because it seems like it could really happen. It involves fake check creation software to make you think that you were due some unclaimed money from one of your relatives. This is extremely effective, because the joker will make the amount out for a realistic, but at the same time high sum, say $25,000.

And they will get clever and send you fake paycheck stubs to really make it look like this is money due to your relatives. They know this will really get you excited. And then of course, when you tell them about it, or even worse you don't tell them about it, and contact a phony number that is actually some prepaid cell phone they bought, you feel like a total idiot. This trick is the worst, because it seems so real. Your friends probably do know the names of your relatives, and unfortunately they will use this information against you. Educate yourself about these check schemes, because they are the hot joke this year. Don't be a victim this April 1st, question everything. Good luck.