Comments on: Let’s Go Phishing

By: Bryan

Bryan — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:49:44 +0000

My e-mail is set for the raw text view, and I saw that it came from a Swedish e-mail server before I got to the faulty “From” field. The web site they want you to visit to report you didn’t receive your refund is in Denmark.

Actually, I may switch all of my e-mail to a single server as it is proving to have an excellent spam system. It tags things as spam or phishing but doesn’t delete them so I can see what it’s doing. So far, no bad calls, and I can auto-delete the tagged emails with my reader [Pegasus]. I’m going to wait until after the “busy season” to make changes, because I can’t take a chance on missing anything at the moment.

This was really pathetic – not knowing what the IRS domain is, not spell checking with a US English checker, using “texting/LOL” language – the European educational system is failing the criminal class.

By: LadyMin

LadyMin — Thu, 08 May 2008 16:47:03 +0000

I got the same one Michael saw. It was short and sweet … just wanted my banking info. It looked good too, unless of course you bothered to look at the link they were sending you to.

By: Jack K., the Grumpy Forester

Jack K., the Grumpy Forester — Thu, 08 May 2008 14:43:22 +0000

…there was actually a Borg-wide e-mail that went out last week warning about this and similar “IRS” phishing scams. Some were actually penetrating the virtual fence that usually blocks this sort of spam…

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 08 May 2008 13:29:19 +0000

That’s a different one from the one I saw. They wanted me to provide my bank account information so they could direct-deposit my rebate. I smelled something not particularly fresh in a certain Scandinavian state and checked the IRS website, and they were already aware of the scam, so I just sent it off to spam-land and chuckled to myself while contemplating the sad reality that there really do seem to be people sufficiently clueless to fall for these things.

My “stimulus” was, in fact, direct-deposited to my account the other day, without my needing to do anything. I’ve now spent it–partly on paying down the balance owed on my new laptop, and partly on my car insurance. Probably not what the Hedgemony would have preferred, but that’s their problem and not mine.

By: Kryten42

Kryten42 — Thu, 08 May 2008 11:35:43 +0000

LOL not to mention the ‘donoreply (at) usa.com’ There is a ‘t’ missing. 😉

Most of these usually come from Nigeria or thereabouts. 🙂

I would take offense at the three words ‘service usa gov’! There’s three words that are never together in reality! LOL 😉

By: Steve Bates

Steve Bates — Thu, 08 May 2008 05:32:07 +0000

“If u don’t receive your refund”

Sloppy work. Doesn’t “John Stewart” know that the possessive of “u” is “ur”?