Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/11/19

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Subject: RE: [Leica] Re: Warning regarding Earthlink
From: "Howard L Ritter, Jr" <hlritter@mindspring.com>
Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 10:36:20 -0500

I've received numerous of these, as well as requests purporting to be from
my bank and my credit card company. The link to the actual firm does go to
that firm's website--nice touch of verisimilitude--but the data the hapless
victim enters goes elsewhere. The brazenness of some of these phishermen is
astounding--some ask for your bank account number and PIN! This is a dead
giveaway--your ISP obviously has no need for this kind of info. They can be
very convincingly devious: One from Earthlink purported to be from the CEO,
by name, and when I plugged that name into Earthlink's website address
verifier it did verify his as a legitimate Earthlink address. You just have
to realize that this is not the way these companies do business, especially
addressing your email to "Earthlink Subscriber" rather than customizing to
the individual recipient by name, which the real company obviously could do
with ease. Sometimes the klutziness of the phisherfolk is amusing--as when
infelicitous English phraseology is used or outright grammatical errors are
committed, (one assured me that I could submit my information with
confidence as to security, as the "Secure Socks" protocol was being
used)--or laughably pathetic, as when one of the tenders from "CitiBank"
contained an originating address ending in .ru (Russia)!

Keep your wits about you and your bullshit detector well calibrated.

- --howard

- -----Original Message-----
From: owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
[mailto:owner-leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us]On Behalf Of Eric
Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2003 6:11 PM
To: leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us
Subject: [Leica] Re: Warning regarding Earthlink


B.D.:

>what looked like a real Email from
>Earthlink customer service telling me that I needed to update my
>personal and credit information or my service would be cut off in five
>days

Ahh...so it's easy to tell it's a fake.  Cancelling an earthlink account
takes many months and more than one phone call.  <grin>


Eric
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