I think you guys misunderstood. I wasn't really trying to warn you guys
about this as you know about it. However I can think of many friends
who are plenty capable of knowing the Nigerian thing is fake but yet may
still fall for the paypal thing. My message was more of a suggestion to
warn your less savy friends.
David Zakar wrote:
I think, if anything, I'm surprised at how many people are acting as
though phishing emails are something new and surprising. I recall
getting these things _years_ ago, and they were of reasonable quality
back then, too. Don't click before you look, everyone. You'd think that
people would understand that by now.
On the same topic, I also just recently got an email from some guy in
Nigeria who's apparently got some money tied up in the government.
Apparently, he's got like five million in a bank account, but he can't
get it out unless he pays ten grand to the government. He offered to
split the sum with me 30-70 if I'd just send him the ten grand to get
the money out. Ten grand for 1.5 million bucks, sounds like a great
deal. Have any of you heard about this guy? Seems like it would have
made the news before, but I'm definitely thinking about taking him up on
his offer - it almost sounds too good to be true!
Sorry if that sounds obnoxious, but "look out for phishers" is about as
obvious as "keep your system patched" and "don't send money to people in
Nigeria". You may as well just say "hey, you need to teach your friends
to be Internet savvy!".
I appreciate the sentiment, though, so I do thank you for the concern.
-DMZ (compounding useless emails with more useless emails)
On Fri, 2005-09-16 at 10:55 -0400, Aaron Silverman wrote:
Just a heads up guys, I got this e-mail from "[EMAIL PROTECTED]":
Note that it also had little fancy logos and stuff:
"We recently noticed an attempt to log in to your PayPal account from
France,a foreign IP address and we have reason to belive that your
account was used by a third party without your authorization.
If you recently accessed your account while traveling, the unusual log
in attempts may have been initiated by you. Therefore, if you are the
rightful account holder, click on the link below to log into your
account and follow the instructions.
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_login-run
(this link really points to www.paypal-webscr.com)
If you choose to ignore our request, you leave us no choice but to
temporarily suspend your account.
If you received this notice and you are not the authorized account
holder, please be aware th at it is in violation of PayPal policy to
represent oneself as another PayPal user. Such action may also be in
violation of local, national, and/or international law. PayPal is
committed to assist law enforcement with any inquires related to
attempts to misappropriate personal information with the intent to
commit fraud or theft. Information will be provided at the request of
law enforcement agencies to ensure that impersonators are prosecuted to
the fullest extent of the law.
Thank you for your patience as we work together to protect your account.
Sincerely,
PayPal Account Review Department
PayPal, an eBay Company"
However the link takes the poor clicker to
"http://www.paypal-webscr.com/"; where they try to steal your
information. Just like that e-bay scam you can enter any name/password
and then see how it tries to get your credit card number and bank
routing numbers and all that good stuff. I know you guys are probably
smart enough not to fall for this but you may want to tell your friends.
P.S. This person spelled "believe" wrong in the last line of the first
paragraph.
