Bad taste 419 email from Kenya

This is in such bad taste...

The idea of using cancer as a means for extracting money from people isn't new but it's certainly unpleasant.

Notice that the name isn't even filled in so whoever built the email in the first place has still got a few things to learn.

The headers include this line which suggests that the site may have been cracked.

from kadogo.kenyaweb.com (admin.kenyaweb.com [194.201.253.109]) 

The suggested reply address in the email is a Yahoo.com.hk domain so it isn't even anywhere near Kenya geographically.

Lots of spam/phishing signs... bad!!

Hello ,

My name is Mrs. Elena Tan; I was diagnosed of cancer about 2 years ago. I
will be going in for an operation, and i pray that i survive the operation.
I have decided to WILL/donate the sum of $10,500,000.00.(Ten million five
hundred thousand dollars) to you for the good work of the lord, and to help
the motherless, less privileged and also for the assistance of the widows,
I have informed my lawyer about my decision in WILLING this fund to you. if
you are interested in carrying out this task in good faith and
trustworthiness.

Kindly Contact my lawyer through this email address
(barr.rlee0701@yahoo.com.hk) or you can call his private Lin:
+855976826769. If you are interested in carrying out this task, so that he
can arrange the release of the funds ($10,500,000.00) to you. My lawyer's
name is Barrister Richard Lee . I know I have never met you but my mind
tells me to do this, and i hope you act sincerely.

Thank you and God bless you. Mrs. Elena Tan.

SPAM from: From Miss.Hellen Watara,

From Miss.Hellen Watara,

Abidjan,Ivory Coast.
 

Good day my dear,
In confidence,I have to introduce myself for I am Hellen Watara,22 years old,I am the only child of late Chief and Mrs.Peter Watara.I prayed before contacting you,please for God sake do not see my mail as embrassment as we do not know each other.

I wish to request for your assistance in my efforts to procure the transfer of my inherited money for investment ventures under your care and directive,while I continue my education over there in your country.I inherited Two Million,Six Hundred Thousand Dollars ($2,600,000.00) here in my name with one of the prime bank in my country and I will require your assistance in receiving the transfer of the money in your local account for investment purposes. As it is my desire to come over to your country to further my education while you take care of the investment of the money.

Please I am an orphane and I need your assistance to transfer my inherited money to your country and also your assistance to secure a nice school for me in your country,where I will continue my education.

I will be very appreciative if you can return to me with urgent response to enable me hear from you.I am awaiting for your immediate response.Please include your telephone number for an easy communication.

Thanks and may God bless you.

Yours sincerely,

Hellen Watara.

---

My Reply:
Dear Miss Watara,

Thankyou for your email received today, 26th Feb 2010.

I'm sorry to hear that you are an orphan but pleased to hear of your amazing 

inheritance. You do not however say what type of dollar. After all Canadian 

Dollars are hardly worth the paper they are printed on.

I note your email is a BT Internet account and not something like a Gmail or other

such as Hotmail. 

You are right. We do not know each other and if God told you that contacting

anonymous strangers on the internet was a good idea I think you need to do 

some more research.

I regret I will not be able to help you on this occasion as I have other things

to do and it would really upset my wife if I handed over my banking details.

Good luck. No in fact I wish you no luck at all as I think this is all a complete 

scam.

Signed,

Me

HMRC Refund email - phishing spam

This is such a badly written email that I really hope no one gets caught out and the perpetrators get tarred and feathered.

First of all the UK Her Majesty's Customs & Revenue will send people a letter if they owe them money. Generally you also have to ask for it as well though I've never been fortunate enough to receive a tax refund.

Secondly the website of the HMRC is www.hmrc.gov.uk so make sure you go there and check who to call next.

Here is the email so you can see the really bad English and excruciatingly bad grammar.

Important message from HMRC: Tax Refund

  We have recheck your tax and noticed that you made a mistake about the amount paid.
  You have to take back the sum of 205 pounds. To suppress this amount, please download 
and complete the form.
  We apologize for the error we made. If you do not complete all fields on the form correctly 
you will not suppress the amount specified.
                
       Sincerely and respectfully, HMRC team.

And another thing. The HMRC never, ever would use such a crappy phrase as 'sincerely and respectfully'.

Kaspersky Laboratory Spam example - phishing spam

This is an example of a brief email trying to encourage people to visit a dodgy website. Fortunately it's an easy one to decode as it is so badly written. Make sure you read all emails carefully and don't click links without thinking first.

Note the bad English grammar in the subject line and the link is clearly wrong if you look for a second or two.

Under forecasts of experts "Kaspersky's Laboratory", in 2010 of a spam does not become less

For alnzn Under forecasts of experts "Kaspersky's Laboratory", in 2010 of a spam does not become less http://vivafefiju.easyfreehosting.com/munocuza.html Social Security Administration

It's all wrong!!

The funniest things about spam emails

I've gone beyond finding spam emails dull or boring and now have the humour filter switched on. It comes inuseful and it means I always read emails twice when they look slightly convincing.

Here are a few things that amuse me.

Overfriendly or culturally incorrect greetings. In the UK it isn't usual to say "Hello my friend" when addressing an email to someone you you don't know.

Bad Grammar is a good giveaway and often worth a chuckle. Just what does "Quality pills in older clinic now" mean, that was from a Cialis email. 

Dodgy formatting where the words run together or there are obviously too many spaces or new lines.
 
Girls emailing me wanting to get in touch. The only reason this doesn't upset my wife is that the girls don't even exist. Sometimes they can't even remember their names from one part of the email to the next.


Offers of a wife are lovely but I already have one and she isn't particularly taken by the idea of sharing me with others. Here is a snip of a lovely email offering to find me a wife. It has a couple of the funnies mentioned above. I've snipped most of the headers.

Subject: Elite Russian girls for you.
From: Vicki Ralph 
Reply-To: giqodec@5.25.ru
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 22:20:00 +0100

hiFind you Wive right now. http://www.porno55.ru

I'm not sure if I'm being offered a wife for myself or even someone else's wife. There are so many mistakes here I acn only guess I'm supposed to visit the link in the email. 

Have you got any good examples?

Phishing emails - How to deal with them.

I reckon I receive >95% spam in my email inbox on a daily basis. Most of is is filtered at the ISP as I have my own domain that I use for emails. Nevertheless loads still gets through with a low enough spam score to avoid the checks put in place on my Mozilla Thunderbird program.

Recognising Phishing Emails

• How many copies of the email have you received? One ought to be enough, more than one - maximum two - is a sure Spamsign.
  
• Take the time to read through the email. Often the grammar and words used will be slightly wrong. This is particularly true if you are reading English and the email was written by someone in China or Africa for example.
• Look for out of place or odd characters in the email. %LIKE_THIS% 
  
• Check the links carefully. Ignore the bit of the url that looks like what you expect and look at the rest. Examples below.
• Think!
  Does your bank send emails?
  Are you registered for their email service? Is this email to the correct address?
  Is this email even from your bank?
  Do you use Paypal? Do you know about their email policy?
  
• Most banks don't send emails, or at least they didn't a few years ago. It was a Godsend to the spammers when the banks wanted to sign customers up for email alerts. I for one wish they never had.
• Have you ever had a genuine email from your bank that you can compare?

What to do next 
Actually it is really very simple!

Simply log in directly to your bank's website and look at your account there. If you have problems logging in then check with the phone banking service.

Precautions

• Always use the most up to date browser. If you're not on Firefox yet or even Internet Explorer 8 then sort it out quickly.
• Use a good email client like Mozilla Thunderbird. It has many facilities for dealing with spam and phishing emails. Outlook Express should never be used.
• Learn to be cautious about your emails. Do you trust the sender?
  

Still using IE6? You are clearly mad, or your employer is, and so are Microsoft for supporting it for so long.


Examples of Bad Links
Just hover over the link in the email and you might get a surprise...
Really obvious:
Hovering on http://www.hsbc.co.uk/1/2/  shows - http://bit.ly/7gRw49
Less obvious, from an Alliance & Leicester phishing attack:

Link says 'Log in to your Account' but shows http://www.miguelimoveis.com.br/upload/alliance/alliance.php Poor Miguel got hacked!