PSA: Phishing emails

~ stashy

I received this email today:
phishingemail
Are you kidding me? JOHN SMITH. I’m not falling for this!

Usually gmail is pretty good at catching these and filtering them, but from time to time they do get past their rules.

If you ever receive emails like this, do NOT click on the links.  The link DOES look like one that originated from my site, but likely the url code redirects to another site (it’s also puzzling that they want me to remove the ebates.ca link since you’d think ebates would welcome the free exposure?)  At best, it could be an ad of some sort, or trying to get personal information from me – at worse, it could be something malicious that may hurt my system or compromise my site / email address.

To help gmail improve their spam filter registry, instead of simply deleting the email, click on the “Report spam” button above the message:
phishingemail2
This will ensure their email account and content are documented with gmail and included in their list of filter rules for the future.

What are some of your experiences with spam emails? 😛

27 thoughts on “PSA: Phishing emails”

  1. That’s so scary! I’m glad you reported it as spam and I hope they don’t email you again :/
    Also, when I saw that it said John Smith, I totally thought out Pocahontas! 😀 lol!!

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  2. Haha, I always think these spammers would have so much more luck if they actually had native English-speakers and graphic designers working for them. Though I did once receive a spam email “from Apple” that I did a double-take on, as it looked pretty good at first glance. “Someone downloaded WHAT on my account?!” :O But the spelling/grammar/design always gives it away, if you look carefully enough. I guess most people don’t, which is probably why they don’t bother.

    DH got a funny one recently – a fake LinkedIn request or something. We Googled the image and they had lifted the businessman’s photo from some dude on Bayer’s board of directors in Germany.

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    1. That’s funny! They’re so crafty and I guess for them, it’s a numbers game. If they even get 0.001% of people to fall for this, they’ve at least gotten some people, with the vast number of emails that get sent out. I do wonder if these are automatically generated or if someone really trolled my site looking for relevant links to include in that email? Seems like so much work, lol.

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      1. Yep, they are always caught out – happened to my mum in law a few months ago… nightmare 😦 thankfully she figured it out before giving bank details *phew* Can’t even imagine the outcome!! XX

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  7. Spam people are jerks! You are so right that the link could look the same but they route it somewhere else. I bet because Ebates is so common they used this as an example and don’t actually care if you remove the link or not, they just want to get a few people to click the one in the email!

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  8. The name itself, so generic. John Smith? John Doe? But usually, google or with some sort would address themselves as a team, not a singular person. I agree with Chris, mostly are gramaticaly done. But there are really terrible legit copycats. Thanks for sharing.

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  10. Oh my goodness! I never fall for these emails. I got an email in my spam letter talking about my appearance in a district court. It didn’t say what court or anything but wanted to me click on a link which of course I didn’t. Spam can be so annoying!

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  11. Omg!! The stupid spam blogs drive me insane!!! The Same lame photos and weird names! I want to scream when I see them! I haven’t seen a phishing thing but I am using a little feed list I built so I miss stuff unless I go to the main feed. But OMG!!!

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