I got this email from our tech guy the other day (I added the italics for emphasis):
Staff, there is a phishing email going around again, something like what is below Please do not respond to this. There were several in the district who did respond and it ended up getting Granite District email kicked off places like Hotmail, MSN, Yahoo and others.
Dear Account User
This is to inform you that you have exceeded your E-mail Quota Limit and you need to increase your E-mail Quota Limit because in less than 96 hours your E- mail Account will be disabled.Increase your E-mail Quota Limit and continue to use your Webmail Account. To increase your E-mail Quota Limit to 2.7GB, Fill in your Details as below and send to the E-mail Quota Webmaster by CLICKING REPLY:
EMAIL ADDRESS:
USERNAME:
PASSWORD:
CONFIRM PASSWORD:
DATE OF BIRTH:Thank you for your understanding and corporation in helping us give you the Best of E-mail Service.
I thought we’d gotten to the point where every freaking adult that uses the internet knew, but seems not. NEVER send personal information over the internet unless you are 100% sure you know who it is going to. Email providers, banks, credit card companies and even blog, online picture and other service providers will never send you an email asking for this. They are ALWAYS frauds.
A good way to have dealt with this would have been to take the time to go to the email service providers homepage, on your own and not through a link on the email, and ask them what is going on. If you initiate the conversation you can almost always trust any emails that result from that conversation. NEVER trust an email that initiates this kind of issue.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
2 comments:
The entire world of spam is based on the potential that somewhere, there is one uninformed moron who's gullible enough to fall for stupidity like this.
Those numbers go down with time, of course, as more of us become ever more informed about the dos and don'ts of online life. But like logarithms that approach an axis line but never actually touch it, there will always a a tiny minority of folks who don't get it.
Because they exist, ever larger efforts to cull them from the masses are made. And the cycle continues unabated. And we all suffer for it.
Then again, as a geek/journalist/media-commentator-guy, this gives me endless topic fodder. So it's not all bad.
It's sad that people fall for this, hopefully spreading the word will get it into their heads and these creeps will get real jobs. I can't believe the people that will give out private info over the phone too. Especially when they don't really know it's Visa or whoever the people say they are. I give out nothing! Give a name and number and I will call that company...and check the number before I do.....great post Max, maybe it will help someone!
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