Now here's kind of a strange incident. Yesterday I was checking my email. I saw what was apparently an email sent by a friend of mine. It didn't really say anything, though. There was just a screenshot jpeg that I was apparently supposed to look at. Which I could only do by downloading it.
Said friend hadn't said that he was going to send me anything like this. (Like what? Exactly.) If he did mail me some kind of image he'd almost certainly give me a hint as to what it was, either saying so beforehand or putting something in the body of the email. The clincher was that the email had been sent at 11:30, when he'd be at work. There was just no way.
I deleted it, of course. There have been times before when spambots have poorly imitated people I knew. The "get me to download stuff" part was new, though. They must be getting older and assuming everyone is stupider.
2 comments:
Up to now I haven't seen any emails purporting to be from someone I actually know but have seen similar attempts. Generally, they're known as phishing attacks where scammers impersonate trusted entities, such as banks, government agencies, or tech companies to trick individuals into revealing sensitive data like passwords or credit card numbers. The dead giveaway for almost all of them can be found in the sender's address - since when does our bank have a yahoo address?
The other weird one I've given short shrift to are the ones that say: 'Thanks for your order off so and so. Here's your receipt for the remittance of whatever dollar amount.' There don't seem to be any done with a sense of humor anymore - the old Nigerian prince scams were great. Do you recall the one saying my cousin is an astronaut who has been in space for 5 years. Please agree to hold his $2million back pay in your account and you will earn half of that money... sheesh.
Now I'll know to watch out for people pretending to be Belle or Geraldine.
"Man alive, I haven't used this Yahoo address in eons. But I still have the password. What shall I do? I know, pretend to be a bank!" Apparently that's the thinking behind a lot of these things. Although a lot of this business is so bot-ridden that there's not a lot of thought going into it.
I still remember getting a message on my answering machine saying that an arrest warrant had been filed for me and that I needed to make a payment in order to get it rescinded. For me, it was just comical. Someone very quick to hit the panic button might not find it so. In other words, I'm not surprised that the bulk of phishing emails are crude and humorless. They're not meant to entertain or express personality. Who would have thought we'd be nostalgic for the old Nigerian scams, wealthy astronauts and all?
From what I've seen so far they won't make very convincing Belles or Geraldines. Maybe they'll try to close the gap by including some kind of watermark.
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