Saturday, 11 July 2020

THE PHISHER FOLK

So someone at Phishers Anonymous Dot Com is working overtime... I've had half a dozen emails this week from "Amazon" and "Paypal" warning me that my "account" has been "locked" following "unusual activity".

The unusual activity in Amazon's case is probably me browsing for Manual Garden Handpush Mowers, having not previously been interested in much garden stuff until my discovery of the peach-leaf bellflower the other day. And I can only guess in Paypal's case, the activity is me imagining I have an account - which I don't, actually, so you know... pretty unusual.

It's the grammar I can't cope with. Whoever's doing this is beavering away, resizing the Amazon logo, spoofing a Paypal support email address, carefully crafting fonts and scripted buttons and colours, so that unsuspecting panickers will click the link and enter their details... you'd think the spoofers would check the easy bit:

'We advise you to resolving as quickly as possible'

'Thanks your account with us'

'Emregency action is required...'

As well as checking the actual email address (usually a string of garbled characters separated by an @) I think it's always a good idea to proof read emails like that. Whether attempting English from a foreign land, or running it through Google Translate and hoping for the best, the Phisher Folk typically mess up something.

I deleted them all.

A while ago I was sending them to each company's dedicating anti-phishing mail address, but as you might know if you've done the same, they never respond. Then I logged into Amazon and changed my password. Had there been any unusual activity, I suspect they'd have not let me do that.

Instead the browser just threw up a whole load of hand push lawnmowers and gardening equipment.

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