What's the point of getting spam if you can't take the opportunity to mock it? Phishing spam - the kind which trolls for your personal financial information - is the most dangerous if you take the bait, but it also can be the silliest because it depends on its prey to believe it's legitimate. The relative illiteracy of its authors can consequently render it hilarious.
I liked this one I got the other day, ostensibly from a bank where I do not have an account:
Dear Washington Mutual user, We are performing system maintenance, wich may interfere with access to your Online Services. Due to these technical updates your online account has been deactivate. Washington Mutual recommend you to reactivate your online account.
OK, that's just embarrasing spelling and grammatical errors (as well as highly implausible that a bank would be so inept to disable a customer's account while performing system maintenance - someone would get fired for that). But I really liked the earnest logic in its final customer service statement:
Our goal is to have Internet Banking available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but Internet Banking may be unavailable during the following times for scheduled systems maintenance: Sunday: 12:00am - 6:15am Eastern Time.
24/7 access, except for the 6 hours it's down every week (so they can disable more customer accounts?). Guess it's not likely they'll be meeting that goal any time soon...
Comments (2)
Another story on internet security, unrelated but funny - I installed WindowsXP Service Pack 2 a while ago, which has, among other things, a security center with a better firewall. Apparently, the security center blocks certain applications from accessing the internet in certain ways. I've had SP2 installed for a few weeks, and never seen a 'block application' dialog until yesterday, when the security center blocked (drumroll please...) Internet Explorer.
Posted by Koichi | December 12, 2004 7:59 PM
Posted on December 12, 2004 19:59
The only things I've seen the SP2 block are my access to Westlaw and Lexis. More than one way to stop anti-trust litigation, I suppose.
Posted by Greg | December 13, 2004 9:36 PM
Posted on December 13, 2004 21:36