{"id":1832,"date":"2009-07-21T21:15:53","date_gmt":"2009-07-21T20:15:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=1832"},"modified":"2012-04-29T00:26:29","modified_gmt":"2012-04-28T23:26:29","slug":"1832","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/?p=1832","title":{"rendered":"And the bad girls and boys are back"},"content":{"rendered":"

Email consters are starting to think <\/em>a little bit. But just a little.<\/p>\n

Those ‘I need to move \u00a368 squillion through your bank account from this dodgy African country and for the use of your account I’ll leave behind a generous tip of \u00a32.7 million’ emails are entertaining.<\/p>\n

But what they’re not is believable<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So the email con-artists have raised their game, just a little.<\/p>\n

This amusing little device fell in to my account:<\/p>\n

from Gmail
\nreply-to Gmail<\/span><\/p>\n

to
\ndate 21 July 2009 10:46
\nsubject Your Email Address<\/span><\/p>\n

Dear Account Owner,
\nDear Account User,<\/span><\/p>\n

This Email is from Gmail customer care and we are sending it to every Gmail accounts owner for safety. We are having congestion due to the anonymous registration of Gmail accounts so we are shutting down some Gmail accounts and your account was among those to be deleted. We are sending this email to you so that you can verify and let us know if you still want to use this account. If you are still interested please confirm your account by filling the space below.Your User name, password, date of birth and your country information would be needed to verify your account.<\/span><\/p>\n

Due to the congestion in all Gmail users and removal of all unused Gmail Accounts. Gmail would be shutting down all unused Accounts, you will have to confirm your E-mail by filling out your Login Information below after clicking the reply button or your account will be suspended within 24 hours for security reasons. <\/span><\/p>\n

* User name: ………………………. <\/span><\/p>\n

* Password: ………………………….. <\/span><\/p>\n

* Date of Birth: ………………………. <\/span><\/p>\n

* Country Or Territory: ………………..<\/span><\/p>\n

Warning!!! Account owner that refuses to update his or her account within Seven days of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thank you for using Gmail ! <\/span><\/p>\n

The Gmail Team
\nG MAI L BETA<\/span><\/p>\n

So in the interest of providing a public service (don’t ask me why! I’m just feeling unusually beneficial to my fellow carbon-based life-forms today), here’s why you should just press the ‘Report Spam’ button \u00e2\u20ac\u201c if you’re unfortunate enough to receive it:<\/p>\n

fromGmail wcesssemembersss@verifsssscsss.com<\/em><\/span> [Your first questions should be… who the hell is this?]
\nreply-toGmail pcesssemembersssssy@gmail.com<\/em><\/span> [Your second question should be… who the hell is this?]
\nto<\/span>
\n[Your third question should be: why isn’t your email address shown?]
\ndate 21 July 2009 10:46<\/span>
\nsubject Your Email Address<\/span> [that’s strange capitalisation!]<\/p>\n

Dear Account Owner,<\/span> [Google have your name. Yes they do. You gave it to them when you signed up for your googlemail\/gmail account. So why isn’t it here?]
\nDear Account User,<\/span> [Eh? Why would they put two salutations, one after the other? And see above for name. We haven’t hit the body of text yet and already we’ve raised six very serious question]<\/p>\n

This Email<\/span> [strange capitalisation] is from Gmail<\/span> [strange capitalisation, again] customer care and we are sending it to every Gmail accounts owner<\/span> [accounts owner? What the fuck is an ‘accounts owner’?] for safety. We are having congestion<\/span> [We are having congestion? Really, would Google phrase that in such an inarticulate manner? No, of course they wouldn’t] due to the anonymous registration of Gmail accounts so we are shutting down some Gmail accounts and your account was among those to be deleted. <\/span>[Point 1. My account isn’t anonymous. Point 2. Was that sentence constructed by Fearne Cotton \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or by someone else who speaks gibberish as their first language?] We are sending this email to you so that you can verify and let us know if you still want to use this account.<\/span> [More bad grammar. And lack of punctuation] If you are still interested please confirm your account by filling the space below<\/span> [More bad grammar] .Your User name, password, date of birth and your country information would be needed to verify your account.<\/span> [The full-stop runs straight in to the Y, the capitalisation is incorrect and the sentence makes no sense unless the reader makes several intuitive leaps]<\/p>\n

Due to the congestion in all Gmail users and removal of all unused Gmail Accounts.<\/span> [More nonsensical gibberish] Gmail would be shutting down all unused Accounts, you will have to confirm your E-mail by filling out your Login Information below after clicking the reply button or your account will be suspended within 24 hours for security reasons.<\/span> [Even more incomprehensible English, atrocious punctuation and a general lack of sense]<\/p>\n

* User name: ……………………….<\/span><\/p>\n

* Password: …………………………..<\/span> [What? Why would they need this? Come on people, think about it, why would they need this? If, (and that alone is a gigantic leap of astronomical proportions) if this email was valid <\/em>all Google would need to do is ask the recipient to generate an email from the account in question. And since when does any reputable <\/em>organisation ask for your password<\/em>? If someone rang you up and asked for your bank details would you hand them over too? And your credit card security number?]<\/p>\n

* Date of Birth: ……………………….<\/span> [What?]<\/p>\n

* Country Or Territory: ………………..<\/span> [Capitalisation!]<\/p>\n

Warning!!!<\/span> [Look, not even Google would use three <\/em>exclamation marks] Account owner that refuses to update his or her account within Seven days of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently.<\/span> [And that’s not even in English]<\/p>\n

Thank you for using Gmail !<\/span> [So now we’re placing spacing between the final letter in a sentence and the punctuation?]<\/p>\n

The bottom line here that this whole email is nothing more than a con and there are many, many signposts that it is a con!<\/em> But, worryingly, there are reports that people are falling for it.<\/p>\n

Why are people falling for it? That’s the question I’m really interested in finding an answer for!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Email consters are starting to think a little bit. But just a little. Those ‘I need to move \u00a368 squillion through your bank account from<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stuff","two-columns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1832\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brennigjones.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}