I received the following email this afternoon (Friday 19th September….)
From: Net Faxmashine [mailto:postmaster@docs-dig.com]
Sent: 19 September 2014 13:53
To: Robert Creech
Subject: You have received a new fax message
You have received a new fax. This fax was received by Fax Server.
The fax has been downloaded to dropbox service (Google Inc).
To view your fax message, please download from the link below. It’s operated by Dropbox and safety.
http:// www.NOT_THE_ACTUAL_DOMAIN.com/khjzjrlkgm/ylygbwnlcy.html
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I have amended the link to “NOT_THE_ACTUAL_DOMAIN” so that you can’t actually click it and end up on the very site you should be trying to avoid.
Even at first read through I can count at least 10 clear indicators that this is a bogus mail. See how many you can spot – sadly no prizes on offer here, it’s just some Friday Fun.
I’ve given this post a title of “The lazy Phisherman” because the author seems to have made no effort to make this appear authentic. With a bit of work, however, it could have been made to look much more convincing and this is where the danger lies. Within the last week one of our clients was experiencing a ‘furniture malfunction’ so, when a mail seemingly relating to a furniture delivery arrived, he was duped into opening it assuming it was genuine. That is part of the way these mails can work – send several thousand mails out claiming to relate to “your recent change of gas supplier” (or similar) and the chances are some of the recipients will have reason to think it applies to them.
Remember to take a little extra time checking the sender and the subject, look for grammatical or spelling errors which a genuine company would probably avoid, look at the link they want you to use – does it match the sender’s domain, etc. There are so many clues (discussed in previous articles on our site) but your best line of defence remains a sceptical approach to links and attachments. If in doubt, call us first.