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September 8, 2004
Information Pirates!
So I've been getting a lot of spam emails lately for websites that try to steal information from me simply by pretending that something horrific has happened and I need to verify my information so that somehow the problem will be fixed. HAH! Do people really fall for things like this? I sure hope not. Anyways they go something like this:
Dear [PayPal, Citibank, Ebay, SunTrust, etc.] customer,
We recently reviewed your [insert account type] account and suspect it may have been accessed by an unauthorized user. To protect the security of your account you must visit the link below and enter your information:
http://somelink.com (which goes somewhere else completely when you look at the source).
Blah blah blah and more random information.
Sincerely,
The [insert site here] Team
The links usually go to very professional-looking sites, usually ones that just steal the graphics from the actual website to pretend to be that website. One even has a bar that hides the actual URL being visited with a fake one that makes it look like it's pointing to the correct website you'd normally log into.
So a word of advice: If you get an email asking you to login from a link in that email to enter sensitive emaily, just don't. Go to that website manually (open your browser and type the URL). In order to help out you may also want to forward the original email to abuse@[enter real service website name].com. Usually this will alert the proper people that can get these fake sites shut down.
So that's my rant for tonite. Peaceout.
Posted by Plocmstart at September 8, 2004 11:55 PM
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