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Gone Phishing — Why Now?
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Gone Phishing

This is really annoying. It costs some people money, but it just wastes my time and ‘Net bandwidth.

I use a separate program for e-mail, Pegasus, and it doesn’t launch anything or display fancy formatting, because I don’t want it to. What is does with my e-mail is save it as text, and I read it as text.

I few minutes ago I checked by e-mail and received this:

Caro membro Banca Di Roma,

Una nuova gamma completa di servizi online e adesso disponibile !

Per poter usufruire dei nuovi servizi online Banca Di Roma occorre prima diventare UTENTE VERIFICATO.

Followed by this link:

<a onclick=”return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)” target=”_blank” href=”http://sccontracting.net/www.bancadiroma.it/site/”> https://www.bancaroma.it<WBR>/</a>

That link in HTML looks like it goes to the Banca di Roma, but it actually goes to a page on a server at sccontracting.net where there is a copy of the bank’s sign in page. If you use it, the low-life, bottom-feeding, scum-sucking, bandwidth-wasting, SOBs that set this up will clean out your bank account.

I forwarded the e-mail to the bank, which took a little work since I’m going from Latin, and there weren’t a lot of Internet terms in Latin in 1962. As you might expect since I’m not fluent in Italian, I don’t have an account at the Bank of Rome, so this was an obvious phishing attempt.

9 comments

1 Alice { 07.19.07 at 11:38 pm }

To the pond scum bottom feeders who send this shite: va fanculo.

Since I am the help desk for various family members, I have over the years successfully trained them to copy and paste links into a browser, rather than directly clicking on them. Would that everyone was paranoid enough to do this.

2 Bryan { 07.19.07 at 11:50 pm }

I always look at them because of this garbage. I have the security addresses for a dozen sites in my address book because of this. I don’t know how much good it does, but I do it anyway.

I also send complaints to administrators when I can trace spam sites to people, especially .edu, who wouldn’t like their bandwidth being used.

3 hipparchia { 07.19.07 at 11:50 pm }

cool! my italian is in better shape than i thought it was!

4 Bryan { 07.19.07 at 11:54 pm }

Come on, most of the words are English cognates, although a few are a problem.

Next time I’ll let you figure out how to report abuse at Italian web sites, because you have to click around to find the real bank site, from all of the corporate stuff.

5 hipparchia { 07.20.07 at 12:57 am }

hehe!

[flash boy?! and did property’s new home not work out?]

6 Steve Bates { 07.20.07 at 1:38 am }

There are many virtues in checking your mail through webmail, but I’ll confine myself to one: if there’s a link in a received HTML message, you can hover over it and the browser tells you where it really goes. Or if there’s any uncertainty, my host’s webmail allows you to open the message source w/o opening the message itself. That capability has saved my assets a few times.

If phishers “accidentally” got their fingers caught under an old-fashioned 19″ CRT monitor that is “accidentally” dropped from about ceiling height onto their keyboards, they might find that “unfortunately” they can no longer ply their trade for a while. But it would be wrong of me to wish that upon them; oh, yes, that would be wrong.

7 Bryan { 07.20.07 at 9:51 am }

If the monitor was still plugged in and broke a water pipe on the way down, it would be really wrong, Steve.

All the e-mail is scanned by my virus software has it is downloaded, and I don’t like leaving on it the ‘Net any longer than necessary.

Hipparchia, the new person got into some health problems and his doctor told him he couldn’t have plants or animals in his house. He caught a infection while in the hospital for a minor problem, and now has major problems. Our American health system at work.

8 hipparchia { 07.20.07 at 5:24 pm }

argh! i’m really sorry to hear that. i hope he recovers.

i’ve been incubating a post on infection control.

9 Bryan { 07.20.07 at 5:46 pm }

It’s tough because he’s older and lives alone. Without plants or animals his place will be like a cell, and mobility problems will not help. He’s afraid of spreading it so he doesn’ t want visitors. He’s trapped with a TV and his telephone.