On Sat, 23 Oct 2004 04:56:36 GMT, "John Smith"
wrote:
Phishing. I hope this last term is not lost on you.

It is not. Thanks.

Hi John,

This term relates to the practice of "look alike" email,
correspondence and web pages that purport to be legitimate businesses.
One such example
http://web.ask.com/redir?bpg=http%3a...E92455EF9C46A6
16C9A2BDF01BE7%26io%3d%26sv%3dza5cb0deb%26o%3d0%26 ask%3dphishing%2bebay%26uip%3d1813385b%26en%3dbm%2 6eo%3d-100%26pt%3d%26ac%3d7%26qs%3d0%26pg%3d1%26u%3dhttp% 3a%2f%2fmyjeeves.ask.com%2faction%2fsnip&Complete= 1
(obtained by simply googling the terms "phishing ebay" and taking the
first hit that leads you to fraudwatchinternation.com).
There are literally DOZENs of fraud alerts for emails originating from
AOL (notorious for its simple access by simply opening an account from
one of any of 100 million CDROMS in the mail).

Anyway, the fraud proceeds by using lookalike names to the legitimate
commercial entity. Now, this lookalike is only slightly off from the
legitimate name such that you might be willing to follow the
directions from correspondence purporting to be from ebay.org or
ebaypurchasing.com or ebayaccounts.net or any of a number of variants
such as these. Another form of "spoofing" (giving the appearance of
legitimacy where the intent is to defraud) is to offer links to
legitimate commercial entities (often seen on the web page in the
traditional blue color) while the underlying html script points to
another address. In other words you click on what appears to be
ebay.com and you end up at 127.000.000.001 which is really the address
of a con artist. You cut a deal thinking you have been working with
ebay, and you have opened your account with Ossama.

This is all called "Phishing." The allusion is like it sounds, they
are fishing for your financial information to raid your bank and
credit.

Myself, I cannot think of going blind into any kind of correspondence
that starts out like this (a recent example from today):
Here is Lucy Mcgraw. I write to you because we are accepting your mortgage application.
Our office confirms you can get a $220.000 loÀn for a $252.00 per month payment.
Approval process will take 1 minute, so please fill out the form on our website:

http://hunter-crescent.net-cash.net

Thank you.

Best Regards Lucy Mcgraw
First Account Manager

You should note that there are many red flags waving here. The odd
salutation; the misspelled word loan; the absurd low rate against the
principle, the promise of a quick application; and certainly a curious
signature that in NO WAY resembles the non-professional email account
name of that originated the correspondence.
This lure screams Sucker Alert from end to end and is classic
phishing.

Click on the address and you can well expect to divulge something to
THEIR advantage in 1 minute!

Phishing. I trust this term is no longer lost on you.

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC