Tuesday, July 17, 2018

Now This One’s Definitely A Scam


Most of my spam gets caught in a filter, but every now and then one slips through. I was surprised at this one because of how legit it looked. Most of the messages I get that say “You’re account is ready!” (or something similar) don’t have an email address that actually says it’s from the company they’re claiming to be (most recently I’ve gotten a message from Lyft at “bulknesloadbaharouth.com” because that’s a thing).

So this one was already a step above the others. Look at it:
No glaring spelling errors or anything! I’m stunned! I tried mousing over the links they sent (definitely not clicking), but they didn’t show me the website it would send me to. So I went into the Inspect screen (right click or hit Ctrl+Shift+I). That gives a lot more information.

Now, I’m not expert when it comes to coding. I couldn’t even figure out BASIC. But I can understand some things, including…


Basically, they have a big old redirect in the link they claim is going to Apple. And it’s to “bdlawyersdir”! Come on, spam. You were doing so well before. Now you have me going to something that seems to be called Bad Lawyers Direct.

Anyway, if you get a notice from something that you didn’t sign up for and you’re not totally sure it’s fake, check where the link is going. Inspect is very useful in that regard.

Sincerely, your Spam Maven.

6 comments:

  1. Sneaky. When recently on hold with PayPal, the monologue ran over what to look for in a spam email claiming to be from PayPal. They noted they would always address you by name and that's always something to look for in any email from a company.

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  2. I get that Lyft spam pretty often and PayPal. I'm sure the Apple ones and PayPal work on some people.

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  3. Never click anything; that's my motto.

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  4. Good tip! I didn't know about inspecting emails, so I will do that from now on. I've been getting weird spam recently from people with my last name. Now, only 5 people in the whole world have my last name (it's made up) so I know these people aren't legit, but I bet other people who don't have such unique names could get fooled.

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  5. Sneaky bastards, aren't they?

    I got a laugh out of the honesty of one spammer today who tried to post a comment on a post I'd made about spammers- "I love to scam people, and I love to make fraud, so please buy you free Viagra."

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  6. Did you sign up for an Apple ID? That's always the dead giveaway to me. Or shopping stuff on the email address I don't do my shopping out of. (Yes, I have a dedicated email for my online shopping.)

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Please validate me.