Taking the phish
Thursday, February 5th, 2009
I recently received a letter I originally dismissed as spam. The first line read ‘We’re currently checking all our customers’ details to make sure our records are kept up to date.’. The thing that made me question whether this was the usual run of the mill phishing letter attempting to steal my passwords and my life was that I didn’t receive it in my inbox but through my door. Now I’m not saying you can’t get phishing attempts through the post, I once received a hand written letter from the wife of an ex-president of nigeria offering to share millions. However, generally people running these cons don’t want to have to pay postage.
The other thing that made me think that the letter may be genuine was the lack of dodgy web address designed to coax me in to supplying personal details and secret codes. It turns out the letter was from Ocardo trying to encourage me to change my setting on there site to receive updates. In fact, if I was willing to sign up of updates on the service they were willing to give me a £5 shopping vouchure. However, in order to drive me to the site they had decided to present the letter as encouraging their customers to update there details. This not only feels like a dishonest way to communicate with your customers it lends credibility to phishing emails.
