I am sure you have heard the term Phishing sometime over the last couple of years. Banks and other institutions have sent out warnings. Some have even purchased air time to warn customers against falling prey to these scams. For this reason I am always surprised when someone contacts me about an email that they have received. Some have a feeling something is not right, but they just want to run it by me. Others have called right in a panic because they think their identity has been stolen.

Just today I received this email:
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Login to your online account

Copyright 2008 Pentagon Federal Credit Union. All rights reserved

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Because I am of the curios sort, I actually clicked the link to see how well the mimicked page was made. The page was very clean and looked legitimate. I tried entering bogus information, sending a message of sorts to the scammers on the other end. I was surprised when the name field was validated and would not accept You N. A$$ (without the dollar signs).

I changed the name to something more legitimate and hit the submit button. On the next screen I was asked for my ATM card number, the expiration, the security code and even the PIN number.

If you take a good look at the URL, you might notice the address looks a little fishy or… phishy.


This is just one example of a phishing attempt that is used to obtain personal information, in this a case bank card and related info. If I had in fact entered valid information the scammers who run this opperation would probably make an imediate withdrawal on this bank account. They would have stolen all two of my dollars! Of course, I am not a member of the Pentagon Federal Credit Union, becuase that might jeopardize my secret identity. This is a valuable tip that was passed along by spy, Julia Chiles (who was of course an international spy).

There are other common deceitful email messages that are being received every minute of every day also. How about, your credit card has just been charged for an airline ticket? It just so happens the ticket (a .zip file) is attached to the message. People just can’t wait to see where they are going. They open the zip file and low and behold their computer is now infected with a virus. Someone has sent you a Hallmark postcard is another common one right now. Again the postcard.zip file contains a virus, do not open it. See these people are preying on our curiosity, our fear and the hope that someone may have actually sent a hallmark greeting. Oh and by the way you must send this to 10 people in your contact list or something wacky might happen. For example, John MacCain might pick a female running mate in an attempt to win over a large majority of Hillary supporters!

Holy mother of republican strategy, somebody didn’t send this along to 10 people!