Did I miss an important call?

We must get five or six junk calls a day, no longer just at dinner time.  If we don't recognize the voice and the caller doesn't identify himself or herself but only asks for one of us by name, we either hang up or say whoever was asked for is not available at the moment.

A few minutes ago a reasonably sounding female voice asked if I was here.  I replied "He is not available at the moment" and hung up.

Then I regretted my action.  I do have a couple of outstanding discussions with a company or two.  Could it have been one of these calling back as a follow-up?

My wife said the person should have identified herself and would call another time if the business was important.  But I have reservations about the caller identifying herself.  The caller may not have known if she was calling a home or an office.  Would the callee want the answerer to know who the call was from?

I suppose I should have at least asked who was calling before hanging up.

How not to write spam

I received the following message from "Amazon";

Important For Your Online Account Access . Action Suspended

this email send by Amazon

Dear Customer

During our usual security enhancement protocol, we observed multiple login attempt error while login in to your online amazon account. We have believed that someone other than you is trying to access your account for security reasons, we have temporarily suspend your account and your access to online amazon and will be restricted if you fail to update

Your first clue to an official-looking email being a spam is how bad is the English.  We all maik misteaks and other tipos, but the above is ridiculous.

Your second clue is where do the included links really go.  I find these by just putting the cursor over the links or dragging the message to a text editor program.  In Microsoft Outlook the first shows the link as a drop down.  In Apple's TextEdit the second shows the source code of the message.  You don't really need to know that much about HTML, but you can scan it for suspicious looking items.

Speaking of spam, this blog has a lull in reverse spam from Russia.  These reverse spammers may have moved to Ukraine.  In any case, the number of pageviews from the United States has gone up but not to the level I was receiving Russian "pageviews".  I hope the US pageviews are real human readers who enjoy what I have written.

Frunds in the bank?

I received an email today with the subject "RE: FRUNDS IN THE BANK!!"  This has to be spam!  "Re" for a subject I never used in email.  All caps.  Double exclamation marks.  And the sender used the title "Mr."  How many emails do you send with any of these in the header?  Maybe caps once in awhile.  "Re" only generated automatically when you respond to another's message.  Misspellings!  Lot of us make typos that we miss, but "FRUNDS".  Could this be a Freudian slip; the writer meant "FRAUDS IN THE BANK"?

Microsoft Outlook allows me to peek at the text of a message without opening it.  Sure enough, the writer has carefully investigated me and would like me to assist in a money transfer of several millions of dollars.  Gosh!  If he claims to be with a Hong Kong bank, doesn't the bank have the connections and resources to transfer large sums of money without calling on complete strangers, by email no less.

I wonder how long my list of blocked senders has become.  I block at least four a day from all over the world.  I wish I would get a commission from all those vendors of email addresses.  They could easily do it by putting my commission in my PayPal account.  As far as I know, I'm the only Melvyn Magree.

Check your chain mail, it might not protect you from falsehood

I received an email from a friend asking me to pass on a quote supposedly from Warren Buffett that we should have a Constitutional amendment to forbid all members of Congress to run for re-election if the budget is out of balance greater than a certain amount.

For more context, see http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/buffett.asp.  The chain email, started in 2011, is included on that page.

If all members of any other group were held responsible for the behavior of some members of the group, we would call it discrimination.

I'm two degrees of separation from Muammar Gaddafi?

A couple of weeks ago I received an email supposedly from Aisha al Gaddafi, the daughter of Muammar Gaddafi.  I'll spare you the tale of woe about her fleeing Libya, but as you can guess it is really a plea that I help her get access to "Thirty Million Great Britain Pounds Sterling" in Barclays Bank London by transferring it to my account.

I'm supposed to "keep this conversation and business between you and I confidential for security and success".  However "I" includes me and "undisclosed-recipients".  I wonder how many people this group includes.

Needless to say, I'll forward this email to the Anti-Phishing Working Group .  I hope many others have already forwarded this, but I could be the first.

Phishers are phools, but the phished are bigger phools

Most of us have heard that phishing and other scams are big business.  Given many of the errors of grammar, errors of spelling, and so on, it is hard to believe that enough people take them seriously.

I just started getting phrench phishing, and I think it is because at least one of two French speakers I've recently exchanged email with have had their address books hacked.

Even though I generally recognize spam from just the title or sender, I often take a peek at the contents.  I was surprised to see that one email supposedly in French may have had a Russian sender; it had securitй instead of sécurité!!

P.S. I did a search on securitй and got 598 hits.  It seems to be common usage in Russian to use this blended spelling of Latin and Cyrillic characters, both in a French context and a Russian context.

Who delivers "snail mail"? You'd be surprised!

I hate the term "snail mail" because it is unfair to the post office.  It assumes using the internet is instantaneous.

The internet is not instantaneous.  First, it assumes the recipient is ready to read email at any time of day.  Some people only check their email once a week.  Second, it assumes the recipient will respond immediately.  Some people never respond; lots of companies take two to three days to respond.  Third, it assumes that any message sent is instantly available to the recipient.  Many factors can lead to delay of email.

Any of the servers involved in routing a message from sender to receiver can be overloaded and thus delay the message by minutes or hours.  A message may be sent by a third party who may take a few days to send it but with the time stamp of the original message.

This just happened to me.  I received a message from a vendor dated 16 Oct 2010 04:27:31.  However, it was sent by the third party at 20 Oct 2010 07:12:36.  The times are PDT.  The USPS generally does a better job; a first class letter put in a box before the last pickup on Saturday may be delivered Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, depending on the distance.

Worse, the address of the bulk mailer makes the email look like spam.  However, the mailer has a legitimate URL; its home page lists "Enterprise Email Marketing" as one of its services.  I guess I won't be sending this email to the Anti-Phishing Working Group.

Report spoof email as often as you can

It seems that every day I get some spam that intimates that it is from a major corporation and that my account has been compromised. I report almost every one of these to the spoofed corporation (if I've found an email address for such) as well as to the Federal Trade Commission (spam@uce.gov) and the Anti-Phishing Working Group (reportphishing@antiphishing.org).

Sometimes it is hard to find an email address for a spoofed company. Somewhere on a home page or a help page you might find a link to spam, spoof, phishing, fraud, or security.

You might think that it is a bit of work to report spoofing, but consider it like calling the police when you see suspicious activity around a neighbor's house. Consider also this statement that I received from PayPal after reporting a phishing message:

Every email counts. When you forward suspicious-looking emails to
spoof@paypal.com, you help keep yourself and others safe from identity
theft.

See also my blog entry Phishing against which bank this week?

Spam or legit?

I received an eCard from Blue Mountain but no sender name in the subject. I think that Blue Mountain is a legitimate company, but when I looked at the source of the message, I didn't find any name that I recognized.

If it was your card, I'm sorry that I deleted it. If it was really a spam message, then I did the right thing.

Whoa to a tale of woe!

This morning I received the following email:

It is with profound sense of sadness i wrote this email to you. I don't know how you will find this but you just have to forgive me for not telling you before leaving. I traveled down to United Kingdom Yesterday for a short vacation but unfortunately,i was mugged at a gun point on my way to the hotel i lodged all my money and all other vital documents including my credit card and my cell phone have been stolen by muggers.

I've been to the embassy and the Police here but they're not helping issues at all,Things are difficult here and i don't know what to do at the moment that why i email to ask if you can lend me £1,500.00 so i can settle the hotel bill and get a returning ticket back home. Please do me this great help and i promise to refund the money as soon as i get back home.

I look forward to your positive response.

It was with the email address of a cousin. Very strange! One, we are not very close and she would have no reason to let me know her travels. Two, she has others who are closer relatives who would be able to find help. Three, she lives in California and wouldn’t go “down to United Kingdom”. Four, why would an American ask another American for money in pounds? Five, I can't believe that the police and embassy were of no help. Six, I do know that my cousin writes much better than this.

I called her and left a message and then called her stepmother about it. Her stepmother called her and then called me back. Sure enough, her email account was hacked and she is closing the account.

I don't know if I was the first to warn her, but it leaves me feeling better that I know she knows about the problem.

What does bother me is that I could not find any way of reporting this to her email provider. You would think that they would be interested in tracking down crooks like this hacker.

I'm not transitioning, prioritizing, or strategizing with neologisms

As you know, I'm not the world's best writer and I don't always write clearly. But I have been jolted by grandiose words that could be replaced with simpler words or more elegant phrases.

When I have time, I report phishing emails to the appropriate authorities. Today's phishing email purported to over four million dollars in accrued interest for me at Abbey Bank in London.

I tracked down Abbey Bank's web site and found the page on reporting spam. It said that one should send details to phishing@abbey.com and then followed it with

The emails are then made available to our colleagues who liaise with the various law enforcement agencies and ISP's.

Argh! Can't their colleagues work or co-operate with law enforcement and ISPs?

No spam!!

Yesterday I had not a single piece of spam to my main mail account. Unbelievable! Maybe word got out that I report bank spoofs to the banks and to the FTC. Maybe my name has been taken off the spammers' lists.

But like one cold day doesn't disprove global warming, one spam-free day doesn't prove spam has disappeared. As of this posting I had received one spam today.

An offensive against spammers or a counter-attack by spammers?

Twice early this morning I was sent "Warning: could not send message for past 4 hours". It was in response to two of the three messages I sent yesterday to PayPal and two banks about phishing with a copy to FTC Spoof .

Either the FTC was overwhelmed with forwarded spam or spammers tried a denial-of-service attack last night. Let's hope it's the former, which is bad enough. Let's also hope that the authorities are finding lots of these crooks and putting them out of business. I saw an estimate that over a third of the Internet traffic is spam!!

See also "Phishing against which bank this week?"

Phishing against which bank this week?

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What gives with spammers this week?

I haven't seen as much spam ever as this week. At six in the evening I already have 23 spams for watches, losing weight, sexual dysfunction, and stock tips. The Russian spam has gone down considerably. I got the first in days: something about filtering internet ads, I think. I haven't gotten any Turkish spam for awhile.

I have been passing on phishing spam to the spoofed companies, even if I don't do business with them. I figure it's my little bit to put a stop to these criminals. If you go to the legitimate site for a spoofed company, you may be able to find something about their spoof policies. Either forward the spam or include it an attachment.

Three I know about are

spoof@paypal.com
abuse@bankofamerica.com
abuse@USAA.com

May you never need to use these addresses.