What Wicked, Horrible, Evil Is In Your Email?

>Until our company installed a Tiger Server with spam protection, some of us were getting a few hundred spam scam messages a day. There’s still wicked, horrible, evil in the email inbox.

I’ve gone from a couple of hundred highly offensive spam scam email messages a day to less than a couple dozen. That’s an improvement. Still, wickedness comes in email.

Take today. Please. This morning, two messages showed up among a dozen or legitimate messages. That’s a good ratio.

The first message subject was in all caps and said, WARNING: CONFIRM YOUR ONLINE BANKING RECORDS. Well, I don’t have any online banking records to confirm.

I’m a big Mac user, online all the time, know my way around Tiger (and Panther, Jaguar, Cheetah, Puma before that) well enough, and I’m not afraid to muck in CLI. But I don’t play with my money online.

Yes, I’ll buy things online. That’s been safe so far. I always use the same credit card and always check the bill carefully each month. I have no online banking records to check, so the Red Siren of Mail Scam went off right away.

This particular message came from the Chase Manhattan Bank Security Department. This is working out well since I don’t have an account there, either.

What did they want? “Jp Morgan Chase is constantly working to ensure security by regularly screening the accounts in our system. We recently reviewed your account, and we need more information to help us provide you with secure service “

Hmmm. Those folks are really on top of security these days. They’re making their bank more secure even for people who don’t have an account at ‘Jp Morgan…’

The boatload of scam hints is loaded at the dock. ‘Jp Morgan?’ There’s that little ‘p’ in there. Scam Hint #22 has to do with upper case and lower case love in all the wrong places.

As you might suspect, this scammer wants me to cough up information, so they’ve already suspended the account that I already do not have in their bank.

“Until we can collect this information, your access to sensitive account features will be limited. We would like to restore your access as soon as possible, and we apologize for the inconvenience.” More blah blah blah, and then a way to fix the problem:

“How can I restore my account access?” That’s what I was looking for.

Next up is the phrase, “Please confirm your identity here: Restore My Online Banking and complete the “Steps to Remove Limitations. Completing all of the checklist items will automatically restore your account access.”

The link, though isn’t to JP Morgan Chase Manhattan. It isn’t even a link to ‘Jp Morgan.’ It’s a link to Japan.

Here’s the link: http://61.213.172.74/.CHASE/index.htm. The link didn’t work. So much for a sophisticated email scam.

The other rather obvious scam came from ALVARO GARCIA SOLANA. If you don’t know Alvaro, he’s the “Online coordinator for EUROMILLION ESPAÑOL S.L.” and my email address was selected to win millions of dollars.

I don’t even remember entering the contest. How nice of them to let me know:

“We happily announce to you the draw of the EUROMILLION LOTTERY e-mail online Sweepstakes International program held 29th July 2005. Your e-mail address attached to ticket number 3-19-26-49-50 drew the lucky star number: (4-5) Bonus Ball which subsequently won you the lottery in the 2nd category.”

How did those wonderful folks who are about to give me, completely unknown to them, all these millions of dollars (or pesos; I wasn’t really sure)? Well, they even tell me…

“All participants for the online version were selected randomly from World Wide Web sites through computer draw system and extracted from over 100,000 unions,associations, and corporate bodies that are listed online.”

So that’s how they got my email. Fancy that. It’s great that they’re taking all their money and giving it to me instead of providing their hard working employees with a legitimate email address: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) just doesn’t sound so legitimate, does it?

It’s likely that these messages are just a few of the hundreds of thousands sent out each year. Our Mac Tiger Server spam assassin catches about 200 a day addressed to me. That’s 2,000 is 10 days, 6,000 in a month, 60,000 in 10 months, and 72,000 spam messages in a year.

Yet, here they come, fresh anew each day. Why? Because, it’s just as easy to send out email to 10-million people as it is to send out to 100 people. Chances are better that someone in the 10-million will cough up valuable information.

Why? P.T. Barnum. ‘There’s a sucker born every minute.’ And they’re all using email.