Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Spam Senses

I got a weird email the other day:

Personally, I have no trouble with being more accessible to people who need it. If there was an actual problem with my blog, then I would work on fixing it. But!

My spam senses were tingling when I read this, for several reasons. First of all, this person mentioned that this was a follow up to a message I don’t remember seeing before, a trope so common that I put it on Spam Bingo. Next is the fact that I don’t actually have a link to that website. Hell, that link to my archive they have doesn’t even exist because I never posted on June 1, 2015. Unless they’re talking about January 6, 2015, which I did post on, although I never use that date format. And also does not have any calendar links on it. (It was actually my resolutions post for the year)

So, yeah. Pretty suspicious, “Amanda Soriano”. I didn’t click on the links they included (who knows where they really led), but I did look up the places they linked to. WebAIM is a real thing to check web page accessibility and The Time Now is a digital calendar. I guess this was some sort of campaign to get people to use one or the other. Or both. If so, it was a very poor one because it is very scammy in nature. The only thing less trustworthy is a robo call from the IRS asking you to pay an overdue tax bill with Best Buy gift cards.

That actually happened. It was reported in the paper. People fell for it, so maybe this isn’t so far off the mark.

Anyway, keep an eye out for scams and don’t ever click on any links in an email even if it looks like it’s to a legitimate site. This has been a public service message brought to you by scammers and the fact that I had nothing else to post about.

Happy Valentine’s Day! Eat lots of candy.

6 comments:

  1. I never click on anything in an email from someone I don't know. That is a poor attempt to get you to link to their calendar.

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  2. I get those, usually for a post with the IWSG. I ignore them.

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  3. Mostly, I ignore links. Even ones my spyware gives the green light on. If I really feel like I need to click on it, I run it through google to see what it has to say about the link before I do.

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  4. Lately, I've been getting weird emails asking me if I can fix a roof or toilet. o.O

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  5. Glad you didn't fall for it, but yeah, that one looks almost legit. Scary. They're getting better at this.

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  6. That's a little creepy. Spam can be so insidious...

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