Have you been scammed by a Cosmo impostor? Someone pretending to work for Cosmopolitan magazine has been harassing women across the country. We need your help to put a stop to it.(Hot Topics)

* We know that there are a lot of sickos out there, but we never thought they'd be so brazen as to use Cosmopolitan to con women. Unfortunately, that's exactly what's been happening. Over the last several months, we've received word from readers who have been phoned by people who claim to be doing research for us. These fake Cosmo surveyors are not only totally unprofessional, but they're also lewd, invasive, and harassing. We want to warn you about these impostors (there appear to be several of them as they've been reported in six states) and also enlist your help in catching them.

Some basics: The impostor is always a man. He will say that he's taking a survey for an upcoming issue, and he will be well-spoken and sound very professional. How do you know he's not for real? For starters, we do all of our editorial surveys on the Web, so such a phone call is unlikely to happen in the first place. But more important, a legitimate researcher would give his or her own name, the name of the research company he or she works for, and sometimes even the name of the client who hired the company to conduct the survey. "They should also be able to provide you with a callback number and the name of a supervisor so you can verify what they've told you," says Diane Bowers, the president of the Council of American Survey Research Organizations. If you ever feel uncomfortable with a surveyor of any kind, yon are entitled to ask for such proof of their authenticity.

After getting your consent, the Cosmo impostor will start asking some basic questions about your age and marital status, ...