Do you encourage people who beg, by donating some money?

You should try begging. It would do wonders to your ego. Begging is a way of annihilating the ego and Buddhists encourage the destruction of pride by begging. I was a missionary once and one of our training was to beg for scraps of vegetables which we then cook for our food. Pride is the worst enemy of a spiritual aspirant.

No not always. there are some peopel who beg and who can't work. they are physicakly handicapped. in that case i may give them alms. for others i do not, there are many very old persons begging. it makes me sad.

I will not donate money to anyone suspicious. I wouldn't even donate money to victims of natural disaster if a box was set up in random places because I know that there are many people who make use of these things to trick people. There are even people who claim to collect money to build a temple walking around, asking people to donate. They have even produced a photocopied proof of the building being constructed but the odd thing is that the temple is built in a foreign country, not mine. This and many other news report of similar cons make it hard for people to trust them. I have even seen a sick person applying for medical assistant at a restaurant. He was very desperate that he met the person in charge when he was having lunch. To my suprise, after the sick person left, the owner of the restaurant told us that the sick man ordered Cola to drink and he doesn't look sick at all. He was a completely different person. Everyone bursted into laughter at that comment.

Hi smilyn, Like the outside world, there are online beggars also. You can see a lot of them in the internet. Have you noticed any of such beggars?

No I do not. I think they can work and I think they make more money than us. I generally say NO!