Monday, October 29, 2007

Control of my informations? Oh noes!

I love it when phishers leave tell-tale signs that they're idiots, as per this email message supposedly from PayPal. I highlighted the most obvious bloopers in bold red, but almost every sentence contains some awkward phrasing or mangled grammar. It turns an annoyance - phishing spam - into something that makes me giggle. Maybe I'm just easily amused, but they try so hard to make it sound official. And then they forget to spellcheck.

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Dear PayPal Customer,

This email is to inform you, that we had to block your PayPal Account access because we had to upgrade our servers in order to remove online fraud.

Our terms and conditions you agreed to state that your account must always be under your control or those you designate at all times. We have noticed some unusual activity related to our servers that indicates that other parties may have access and, or control of your informations in your account. Please follow this link to confirm your account access information :

https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?_cmd=login-run

Please be aware that until we can verify your identity no further access to your account will be allowed and we will have no other liability for your account or any transactions that may have occurred as a result of your failure to upgrade your account as instructed above.

Thank you for your time and consideration in this matter .

Sincerely, PayPal Account Departement.

5 comments:

Daniel said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Daniel said...

Let's draw a little Venn diagram, shall we?

[PEOPLE WHO NOTICE MISSPELLINGS]


[PEOPLE WHO FALL FOR PHISHING SCAMS]


See? It doesn't matter.

Beth said...

sigh

the other good one is when they forget to change their URL into one that looks "good"

Daniel said...

[PEOPLE WHO FALL FOR PHISHING SCAMS]

[PEOPLE WHO THINK THERE MIGHT BE SOMETHING SUSPECT ABOUT A PAYPAL EMAIL WHERE THE URL IS NUMERIC AND/OR IN ROMANIA]

Irene said...

Yes, URLs are also a tip-off. But they don't have the added bonus of sounding like a goofy internet meme, the "I'm in ur account, controlling ur informations" sort of thing. That's the part that adds just a wee bit of mirth to my day.