"...this email might be a scam."
Ya think??
"...this email might be a scam."
Ya think??
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Whoa.
They're even sloppy enough to spell it "Wells Forgo"?
Of course, it always surprises me that scammers and spammers don't take more care with little things like that.
It's as if they're the hand of Darwin, scamming those who don't pay attention and think.
Marc,
You would be surprised at how many people actually fall for these lame phishing attempts, as well as the rest of the various families of email and mail scams.
There are a myriad of variations of the forged check scam, for instance, including one where people who list their resumes on Monster.com find themselves solicited to become "financial agents". Those who accept soon find themselves forwarding funds via Western Union in exchange for the scammers' forged checks. And their bank is not sympathetic when they bounce.
People can be remarkably stupid. And greedy. At least this phishing trip was predicated on self-preservation instead of making a quick buck.
Its the way of the con-man, they dont have to talk people into anything, they let people talk themselves into it. I dont think i'd be getting emails from Nigeria royalty looking to stash their millions if people werent sending them money to encourage it.
I've got Nigerian relatives all over the place, and they're dropping like flies. Every day, it's an uncle, an aunt, a cousin. Geesh! I must really be bad luck! Some nice kind rich Christian lady just emailed me this morning. She wants to help people out over in the states and needs somebody to help her spend all of that money. Boy if she only knew the luck I've had, she wouldn't be writing.
I also must be something of an international financial genius, as I'm constantly getting queries on moving money out of foreign countries. Sure, I've sold things on E-bay to people in Mexico, but who knew that was all it took to qualify?
There also seems to be a lot of rich folks who are picking random people on the internet to share their wealth with. Once again, what a great story, but you'll never read about it in the MSM. I feel sorry for those rich folks -- ater all, it seems a lot of my relatives who are prone to strange accidents were also rich.
So I push the "post" button, and my email pops open with a letter from Citibank. Looks like there's problems again with my account. I don't even have a Citibank account. Maybe it's part of those fraudulent E-bay transactions that E-bay keeps warning me about. Or that notebook computer that the buyer is really angry about that he bought from me.
On a serious note, to SPQR's point, a recent survey estimates that a good phishing attack can get up to 1 in 10 folks to click the link. Amazing.
The hardest thing about answering those emails is coming up with a creative new name. I suspect the clowns that send these emails are only marginally computer literate. Not wanting to make it to easy to access the phony account, I make sure I include a couple of extended ascii characters in the password.