Go Phish! Stupid is, as Stupid Does!
We fondly remember the character Forest Gump, played by Tom Hanks, saying several clever sayings, including “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you will get next” and “Stupid is as Stupid does.” Or at least we think that’s where we first heard those comments.
Anway, phishing emails are aimed at folks who aren’t properly self-educated about the Internet, or are too greedy to know when something’s too good to be true. We delete them ourselves by the dozens every day, some days more than others, when they make it past our anti-spam filters on the server.
Remembering simple things, like no legit ISP, Bank, etc. will ask for your password via email. Anyone getting a letter from an unknown person, telling them $$ are waiting for them if they only provide their personal bank account info, etc., ought to know it’s bogus. Anyone getting an email from “your webmaster” saying your email was being suspended due to suspicious activity from a foreign country ought to know better.
Two of our customers fell for this password reset trick within the past year. One was an attorney and the other a retired school teacher. Both got their email accounts hijacked. The attorney’s Road Runner account was used to promote the bogus UK Lottery winning scam, and the retired school teacher’s Hotmail account was used to send out request for help, asking her friends to wire transfer money to her over in West Africa, where supposedly she had been mugged while doing missionary work, and couldn’t leave the country due to no cash or passport.
But apparently lots of other folks still fall for it, cause the messages keep on a coming. Many with extreme bad grammar, very hard to believe logic, and lots of misspellings like they were written by a 6 year old.
Internet Explorer 8.0 and some other browsers have started building in anti-phishing guards, as has Norton and other major anti-virus companies.
Here is a screen shot of one really bogus email that we recently received. Can you spot why it looks fake even before clicking on any links? Actually, this one wanted you to reply back to it with the required information. How many misspellings can you find? And it wasn’t even addressed to me!
This one reminds me of the old joke (some say Aggie, others say Blonde) that said “This is a Blonde Virus. I’m not very good yet at writing viruses, so please help out a blonde and erase your hard drive and then forward this email to every body in your email address book.”
The purpose of this posting is just to remind folks to be alert when you get phony emails from some place that want you to open an attachment or click a link to submit personal info. DON’T FALL FOR IT! Keep your anti-virus software updated daily. We highly recommend and use Sunbelt Software’s VIPRE Anti-Virus software for all Windows PC computers. CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO ABOUT VIPRE.
This post had nothing to do with CLEAR, but CLEAR will never ask you via email to give them your user account number, name or password. They already know it.
Feel free to contact us about any computer related or CLEAR related inquiry, at 210-771-7075 during normal hours please. Or email us at lee@wimaxsatx.com anytime of the day. We only work 7 days a week, taking off on the 8th.
