Phishing Spam

[Pete]

Just found this choice email in my inbox. I shouldn't be surprised, as it matches the normal level of bad grammar, spelling and attention to detail I think we all recognise.

Which beggars the question, if any of these scammers actually learnt to write & proof-read their junk, would more people fall for it?

quote:Dear E-mail Account Owner,

This message comes from your (EMAIL SERVICE PROVIDER) messaging admin
centreto All E-mail Account owners. We are currently improving our
Database and E-mail Account Center and creating more certainty for our
Legal Service clients.

At this moment we are upgrading our data base so that there will be more
spacefor new customers and increasing the surf on the Internet. To
preventyour Webmail or email address not to be de-activated and to enable
it upgraded, youneed to assist us by sending the information below to
enable us upgrade it, sothat your email account status were flect in our
database as a very active,useful and legal email account.

Do send to us the below information to enable us upgrade your Account,
elseyour email account will lost in a short time.

User Name Email:
E-mail password:

WARNING!!! E-MAIL OWNERS who refuses to upgrade his or her account within
Fivedays after notification of this update will permanently be deleted
from ourdata base and can also lead to malfunctioning of the client or
user's accountand we will not be responsible for loosing our account.

Thanks for your understanding as it is geared towards serving you better.

Email Messaging Support Team
Warning Code: ID67565434

In this example, I'm loving the fact (EMAIL SERVICE PROVIDER) has been left in caps and parenthesis, almost like the original illiterate bastard who created this has past it on to others as a mail merge example, but the illiterate bastard who sent it to me couldn't be arsed to check what was in it.

Some sentences just don't make sense. 'We are currently improving our Database and E-mail Account Center and creating more certainty for our Legal Service clients'

Some are comically inacurrate. 'At this moment we are upgrading our data base so that there will be more spacefor new customers and increasing the surf on the Internet.'

And the overall language is just so poor that you'd have to be *really* stupid to fall for it. 'E-MAIL OWNERS who refuses to upgrade his or her account within Fivedays after notification of this update will permanently be deleted from ourdata base and can also lead to malfunctioning of the client or user's accountand we will not be responsible for loosing our account.'

A classic amongst phishing attempts.

Fail.

[honey lamb]

They're the kind of correspondence you'd love to correct and send back - except that they would then use it and probably entrap some people

[Nottingham Nick]

I caught the tail end of an article on Sky News about Jack Straw's email address book being hacked (it was a Hotmail account![:D] ).

The 'security expert' they interviewed said that the phishing emails are deliberately badly worded to encourage people to 'take them on' because people think they are dealing with people who aren't very clever.

Link to Sky News story.

Nick

[Bazz]

It is an unfortunate fact that this type of scam along with most others is most successful with those members of society who are least prepared/able to recognise and deal with them for what they are.

Additionally I do sincerely believe that the domain name registrars need to be policed far more vigorously to prevent the registration of misleading or lewd/disgusting domain names. This alone would prevent an awful lot of fraud and one hell of a lot of scam emails.

[ChuckC]

Something similar made the rounds in the US, especially on college campuses, in 2008.

Chuck-

[HighFlyer]

I really do wonder who falls for these. I sold a phone on eBay and had a Nigerian chap try and fraud me by emailing me a fake Paypal payment. The grammar was appaling in the email and came from a Hotmail address - it was so obviously fake, and besides which, a quick check of my actual Paypal account can show that I had not recieved a payment but I am sure he's succeeded with other people.

As Queenie says, 'we can't go around punishing people for being stupid ... [:D]'

Thanks,
Sarah