Joho the Blog
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July 13, 2007
Among the phishing spams I got today was one addressing me as a Mid America Bank FSB customer (which I am not). Apparently there's been a little mixup with my records, and they need me to submit all of my personal information, passwords, and embarrassing photos. These scammers are so lazy that the URL to which I'm supposed to respond doesn't even attempt to make it look like it's a bank address. In fact, the domain is: http://svindler.dk Well, I guess you;d have no one to blame but yourself if you fell for this one. Posted
by D. Weinberger at July 13, 2007 07:53 AM
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Comments
And, if no one has told you, yet, "svindler" is Danish for "swindler"...
Posted by: Erick Herring | July 14, 2007 07:05 PM
You're on svindler's list!
Posted by: David I | July 16, 2007 09:22 AM
I get some e-mail scams that are so patently obvious. There is hardly an attempt to disguise the scam.
However, I think some people feel a need to get scammed. Some people have a strong psychological "need" to have limbs amputated (I am not making this up) and some people have a desire to hurt themselves or even kill themselves.
These obvious scams work on a certain percentage of people because it is a sort of "truth in advertising."
Someone should try running a scam e-mail with a "scam disclaimer" on the bottom of it. I bet some people would fall for it.
Posted by: kermit johnson | July 16, 2007 12:47 PM
Some of the phishers are much more sophisticated: I got one recently from "Fifth Third Bank" (nudge nudge, wink wink) asking me to go to www.53.com/bankingportal/session/conf and then give them all my info. Sounds reasonable, right? www.53.com is, after all, the bank's URL.
To check out the legitimacy of a URL, go to it, then type in the browser address bar exactly this:
javascript:alert("The real URL of this site is: " + location.protocol + "//" + location.hostname + "/");
Then press enter; a popup will show you the real URL. My bogus bank thing was a site in New Zealand.
Posted by: Stu Rubinow | July 17, 2007 06:05 PM