Originally these emails went to my ISP’s junk folder (which is a kind of holding cell which stops them getting to my computer) I logged in and saw them. I knew they were phishers but I was intrigured so I got them delivered.
Initially in outlook they opened as text emails so I saw the two links straight away. But when I faffed about a bit, outlook decided to view them as html or something and ‘hide’ the obvious.
One email from paypal, with link, perporting to be an email about removing limitations.
Another from ebay, with link, perporting to be a notification of a new message.
“HMMMM! both of these emails of completely different relevance have the same exact link. Something is amiss!”
“Well, PayPal owns eBay. Or vice versa. Or Google owns both of them. Or something. So, it makes sense.” click
:: enters personal details ::
:: wonders where money went ::
I keep getting the bank phishing emails, for banks I’ve never even heard of, let alone have accounts in. And all of them have terrible spelling and grammar errors.
They just aren’t even trying anymore. And worse than that, it still seems to work for them.
The sad truth is that many of the victims of phishers are probably a little wanting in the grammar/spelling department themselves and the errors fly right over their heads.
I keep getting phishing e-mail from an Italian bank. Problem is, the e-mail is entirely in Italian, and seeing as how I have only a very limited knowledge of Italian, I am unable to tell if their Italian grammar is crap as well.
They really are not trying, or maybe they don’t really need to. I can think of reasonably intelligent people who would fall for these scams, the same people that routinely forward glurge to me.
I got one once stating that they needed my details following some major issues with their databases. I remember there were three big flaws, but I can’t recall what the third one was. Here the two others :
It was not coming simply from one bank, but supposedly from 5 or 6 different major French banks. IOW, I was supposed to believe that several banks had lost their customer’s details at the same time and had sent a common e-mail (and that such a situation wouldn’t make the headlines in all the medias).
More importantly, these French banks, sending an e-mail to their French customers, like me, wrote it…in English! That makes perfect sense…