I just got the sneakiest scam e-mail I've ever gotten. It pretended to come from Citibank, who I do have an account with, and it looked like one of their e-mails and was even written professionally in corporate-speak (it may have used text from one of Citibank's own e-mails). Importantly, my spam filter didn't catch it.
It was one of those that wanted you to "verify" your account info (in this case, as part of a new policy that requires you to verify your account info once a month to protect against Internet fraud). What was so ballsy about the e-mail (I give them credit in a way) is that they had verbiage right in the e-mail warning "customers" about e-mail fraud, and they specifically mentioned the exact techniques they were using to scam right towards the beginning of the e-mail. From the e-mail:
Two examples of common Internet scams include:
* Attempting to steal a customer's login details by sending out emails which appear to be from a financial institution, and requesting personal details (eg Customer number and password)
* Creating a website, which looks similar to a financial institution's, but acts as a 'ghost website' capturing customer details and using them to transact on the customer's account
Impressive. Though, I didn't actually check out the website they linked to. I have a high SPF (scam-protection factor), but this even fooled me for a few seconds to the point where I was mad at Citibank for being so bone-headed as to require account validation 
If it had been any of my other accounts I probably wouldn't have bought it even for those few seconds, but I'm already mad at Citibank and looking to close my account anyway, so this fit with my perception of them. Here I make an excuse about just having woken up after sleeping for 5 hours this evening trying to get rid of a headache (not completely successfully, even though I took an Advil as well).
Update: Heh, shows how out of it I was yesterday. It's Capital One I have an account with and who I'm mad at. I do have business with Citibank (my student loans are through them), but I have no credit cards with them. Sheesh, yesterday was a bad day.
Saturday, June 12, 2004
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I got one of those too. I didn't actually read it, but it looked official enough that I thought that Citibank missent it somehow; since I don't actually have a Citibank account.