Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Current scams that make me laugh




I have attached images of two of the latest scam emails I have been receiving lately. I get the IRS one a lot, something like 15-20 times a day. Outlook's junk filter grabs them right away, but I always look in there for false positive hits, as Outlook will occasionally put very valid email in there (don't get me started on that rant).
The first one you see is the IRS one. So I'm supposed to believe that the IRS owes me money, and to get it all I have to do is click that link. In case you didn't know, you can hover your mouse over a link in Outlook (2007 at least) at it will show you the URL for the link. When you do that in this email, the URL starts with www.irs.gov, which they do to try to sucker in the casual observer. However, they then continue the URL with .gewssr.com plus other directory information. So the full URL is www-dot-irs-dot-gov-dot-gewssr-dot-com. I haven't gone to gewssr-dot-com because it will most likely start infecting my computer, therefore I recommend that you don't do this either. As a general rule, don't follow links in email, even if it comes from someone you trust, as they may have a virus that sends email to everyone in their address book to try to spread itself. At a minimum, be sure the link you're following is a valid URL, and not a weak trick like I described above.
The other image is a new scam (for me at least). I'm supposed to believe that Microsoft, in its super giant company generousity has decided to give me $1.9 million dollars. And this is obviously real, due to the awesome use of the English language, but not to mention the word doc attachment that is likely riddled with macro viruses. I really have to wonder who would fall for this, but I may be both surprised and shocked.