phone phishing
Sometimes it can be interesting and educational to look through your spam. Especially that which gets though your spam filter. Take this one for instance. It is an obvious attempt to get me to reveal personal details so this guy can assume my ID. A LAME attempt at that. But this guy get cute though. Instead of getting me to browse to his fraudulent website, he wants me to make a phone call. I couldn’t resist so, I made the call. I was at work so I wasn’t worried about him gleaning info from the caller id. On the other end was a cheesy voice synthesizer that sounded like a Cylon circa 1978. It asked to enter personal info, like account#, SS#, and PIN. of course all of this stuff was made up. I don’t even have an account with MBNA. It accepted the info no problem.
Just so that you guys know the credit card account number has check digits. By simply running a an algorithm on the number you can tell if it is valid number or not, before you even authorize a transaction with the bank.
Anyway, this little excerise got me thinking about something that Bob Cringely wrote last year.
So, let’s have some fun shall we. The number is 1-800-976-5713. Please be safe when you call this number. Use a pay phone (we still have those?), a work phone, or any phone where the Caller ID info is turned off. Make sure that NONE of the info you enter is legitimate, for you or anybody else. Just enter random digits. Also be sure to TAKE as LONG as you can to do it. He’s got an 800 and paying for each call so we want to make sure he gets his money’s worth. 
Also start an email chain asking everyone in your address book to do the same. I abor email chains, and as a rule I never respond to them, but if there ever was an exception this is it.
And if you want to know who this guy is the IP address where the email that the email originates from resolves to dsl-ap-dynamic-063.155.22.125.airtelbroadband.in. Apparently somebodies home PC. If I’m not mistaken the TLD is India. Yo Airtelbrodband !! Sombody on you subnet isn’t playing NICE !!
Lastly check out this post. It has 3 REALLY good things you can do to keep you safer on the Wild Wild Web
