Output Stream of Consciousness

They (though it may be a different "they") are at it again (as if they'd ever stop, of course), on another one of my accounts.

This one uses more nasty, urgent language. You can dress it this attempt to con people into going against their better judgement up by calling it Social Engineering, but I think that's far too... euphemistic.

Once again, it's absolutely amazing that the eBay account I don't have has been cancelled! Oh god, maybe they'll also take away the time machine ... that I don't have...

Here is a screen capture of this particular scam.

In this one, most of the e-mail is text, save for the area with the supposed "link". There's something slightly more worrisome here, from my point of view for tracking them down. Unlike most scam link addresses, this one is long. Now, there are three possibilities: the link is made to look random, but is actually the same for every e-mail sent, and provides a way in, the link is actually random and means nothing, or the link was generated individually as a way to track who they were sent to.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like I can get into their site by faking information, so I'd have to wait until finding someone with the exact same to compare notes. If our links were the same, then sure, go visit the site. Otherwise, I'm not sure I want to confirm to a criminal that my e-mail address that they bought/stole/harvested (how much honour is there amongst thieves?) is actually "live".

*sigh*

Comments:

#Phishers are at it again...

Once again, looking for eBay account information AND credit card information.

Here: http://www.karamsoft.net/css/ws/eBayISAPI.html

Comment by nimble [Member] — 08/27/05 @ 12:10

# Here's another one, just in today. This one is nasty in that someone went to the trouble of getting a domain with the same name as a bank, except with a ".net" on the end. In case you're wondering, too, Albertans like me don't do a whole lot of banking in California:

Dear BankoftheWest.com customer,

We recently have determined that different computers have logged onto your Online Banking Bank of the West account, and multiple passwords failures were present before the logins.

We now need you to re-confirm your account information to us. If this is not completed within 24 hours, we will be forced to suspend your account Indefinitely, as it may have been used for fraudulent purposes.

We thank you for your cooperation in this manner .

Click below to confirm and verify your Online Banking Account:
http://www.bankoffhewest.net/bow/6.0_signin/index.html?=verify

Note: If you choose to ignore our request, you leave us no choice but to temporary suspend your account.

Best Regards,
Bank of the West Security and Anti-Fraudulent Department.

(Anti-Fraudulent Department? That's not a tip-off :) )

Comment by nimble [Member] — 09/05/05 @ 11:04

# Another phish today, attempting to redirect users to: http://212.156.223.203:680/rock/isap/

Oddly enough, Thunderbird (which I'm using as a mail client) doesn't actually redirect you to this, so this trick doesn't work for them. What the phishers are doing is giving you a graphic with a link to the above site, and then making an HTML "map" (you're allowed to specify that certain rectangles on the graphic point to different links) to redirect you to something that's not eBay.

Comment by nimble [Member] — 09/25/05 @ 12:09