Dear EarthLink member,
your EarthLink membership is temporary FROSEN!
Identity theft and identity fraud are terms used to refer to all types of crime in which someone
wrongfully obtains and uses another person’s personal data in some way that involves fraud or
deception, typically for economic gain. Unlike your fingerprints, which are unique to you and cannot
be given to someone else for their use, your personal data especially your Social Security number,
your bank account or credit card number, and other valuable identifying data can be used, if they
fall into the wrong hands, to personally profit at your expense. Due to the recent increase of credit
card fraud operations, we decided to toughen our antifraud measures. To continue your EarthLink membership
we now require you to update your billing information and fill out some additional fields such as ATM PIN-code,
Social Security Number, Mother’s Maiden Name and Date Of Birth since it is impossible for a scammer to know it.
Our fraud department team requires you to confirm your identity and that you are indeed the cardholder
of the credit card, by providing this information. Your EarthLink membership will not be continued
until we receive this confirmation.
This one isn’t a good example, but some of them come in with all the ‘important’ words (pharmacy, viagra, cheap) misspelled or spelled with number-substitituion (v1agra, ch3ap),
or whatever, so I wonder if it’s not a ploy to get around the filters.
That… ‘frosen’ one, though, I think the author either just isn’t very bright. It has some very oddly unprofessional phrasing in it, that even without the spelling error would make me wary (well, that, and I don’t -have- an Earthlink account, and, well, what it’s asking for is an obvious ploy, so…)
Good lord… additional fields such as ‘ATM PIN-code’ … given to your -ISP-? At least the ones purporting to come from banks have some connection to your atm card… the fact that there are people stupid enough to respond to this is just … sad.
Anyway, I got this:
Hello!
Viagra is the #1 med to struggle with mens’ erectile dysfunction.
Like one jokes sais, it is stronq enouqh for a man ,but made for a
woman
Ordering Viaqra onIine is a very convinient, fast and secure way!
MilIions of people do it daily to save their privacy and money
I really wonder if the ones like this don’t introduce the spelling errors deliberately (to screw up the filters that match on keywords, or on multiple e-mails that look ‘identical’.)
Holland, Denmark, Mongolia, Zimbabwe, it’s all the same to us Americans, them foreign countries. Stop nitpickin’ or we’ll kick you out, send you to some East European slum like Toronto!
A high-level geek friend of mine believes that the imaginative spelling in spam is intended to dodge filters, but the execrable spelling in phishing scams is because most of them originate overseas, usually China.
Either way, spammers and phishers should be publicly flayed for the amusement and edification of the masses.
