Thursday, November 18, 2004

Phishing guide

I occasionally, when I have nothing better to do, read through the emails that Xtra have rejected as spam. This one is particularly good, and I thought that as a service to the phishing community I'd provide some help with their English. If anyone wants to help with better descriptions of their grammatical errors, feel free to comment.

Dear Sir/Madam,

You have got [ "You got" or "You have received" ] this email because either you or one of your household member has [ missing indefinite article ] credit/debit card account. As a unite [ should be "united" ] work in [ superfluous] between Co-operate [ should be "Co-operating" ] Governments of different countries , we have developed a new System [ nouns do not take a capital in English ] which will help all bank customers to protect their identity from theft and provides [should be "provide" ] complete protection.


[Missing article] Governemnt [ do you own a spell-checker ] Authority is kindly requesting [ no! ] to fill out the form completly and you will not have any privacy problems with your credit/debit card details in future.

You will be free to shop [ possibly the word "for" should appear here ] anything anywhere you want without getting any problem of [ not "of" - "with" ] your identity and it will make your shopping safe and secure. In case if [ what? ] you do not provide your billing information, you will not be applicable to our System as a kind of service to all bank customers. [ they're all words, but they don't have any meaningful relationship ] Kindly provide your information by following the link [ removed ]. We will be happy to hear from you. [ My god! An entirely correct sentence! ]

Providing the information will let you to [ you don't need that 'to" ] shop instantly anywhere you want with total safety and security.

Sincerely,
Co-operate Governments Bank Security Services
9800 Savage Road,
Suite 6740 Washington,
DC,
20380 United States
[ You do know that the Americans torture and execute fraudsters, don't you? Using a US address probably gives them jurisdiction. Wouldn't it be better to use an address in Nigeria? People everywhere in the world have a high regard for Nigerian financial institutions and are much more likely to reply to spam emails with a genuine Lagos address ]

I suppose I wouldn't do better at writing spam in German, say.

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