Friday, March 14, 2008

Spam keeps getting more clever - "final verification of email account" is as real as the african lottery

Most of my spam gets filtered away without a second glance except to see the ridiculousness of the subject lines. In this case, I've seen one that is pretty clever (and relatively new), but obviously fake. As with any other spam emails that ask for your username and password, use your common sense and delete it. This particular spam claims to be from an "educational messaging center" purporting to delete all 'edu' accounts. I can only hope nobody is stupid enough to confirm their "username, password, date of birth, and country or territory." The subject line is "FINAL VERIFICATION OF YOUR EMAIL ACCOUNT."

The email is fake and the ip address (at least where mine was from) looks like it came from a hijacked student account from Purdue University, and ultimately from Johannesburg in South Africa. I'm 100% sure that this is probably not the clearinghouse for "educational emails." In my limited search for more information, Purdue has already been clued in on how it's system has been manipulated. See Purdue community warned of email scam. Who falls for these things? As pointed out by this blogger, obviously some stupid kids in the midwest. Way to go clowns.

Then again, who would have thought that Gov. Spitzer was leading a double identity as "Client No. 9?"

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