A Phishing Reminder, As The FBI Director is Banned From Online Banking
This person, Mueller said, received an email, purportedly from his bank, which looked "perfectly legitimate." It asked him to verify some information, and he began to do so, until he realized that it "might not be such a good idea."
"It turned out that he was just a few clicks away from falling into a classic Internet phishing scam, phishing spelled with a 'ph,' and this is someone who spends a good deal of his life warning others about the perils of cybercrime. And yet he barely caught himself in time and he definitely should have known better, and I can say this with some degree of certainty because that person was me."
Mueller tried to pass this off to his wife as a "teachable moment," but she deftly replied, "It is not my teachable moment; however, it is our money. No more Internet banking for you!"
Watch the video. In reality, this is a reminder of how easy it is for anyone to fall for a phishing scam.
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Hahahaha, FBI boss almost got owned... |
But he ultimately got owned by his wife! |
kid007:|
However, he was able to convince his wife to allow him to continue online banking after explaining that he needed access because he was expecting a large funds transfer from a Nigerian prince. One good thing about having your own domain name is that you can give unique e-mail addresses to every entity with which you do business (and set your postmaster account as a catch-all to read them). I have 80+ e-mail addresses, and I've never even had to guess if a message is a phishing scam because I've never received anything asking for information/clicks that was addressed to the one unpublished e-mail address that I only use for my bank. BTW: Microsoft's Hotmail service was compromised by phishers the day before yesterday and they got 10,000+ passwords. Change yours! (http://www.infopackets.com/news/security/2009/20091006_hotmail_leak_phishers_make_off_with_thousands_of_passwords.htm) |
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3vi1, That's a great idea. It's something I will do from now on. Hushmail.com is a great service for anyone interested in secure email. |
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I use Gmail for most communications, and have noticed that often a letter will arrive from "me." I don't know whether that means it's my own email address, or whether the name "me" seems to spammers & scammers like it would appear legitimate; but since I know no one named "me" and I never send email to myself, I know it to be spam. (And Gmail has a pretty decent filter, one of the reasons I use it.) I also don't do online banking. Yes, call me a curmudgeon, but I prefer doing business with human beings. My need to pay bills at 3 AM is minimal at best; 43ยข is a mere pittance for the small number of checks I send out per month; I get a receipt in my mail slot at work for direct-deposited paychecks; and I always know my balance because of the twin miracles of addition and subtraction. Besides, they give you free dog biscuits and lollipops, something you don't get with online banking! |
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Curmudgeon!? Is that what you kids are calling it these days? :D
My banks keeps wanting me to switch to paperbilling. And while I do pay bills online, and use online records as part of balancing my books, the paper copies of bills come in very handy when you're trying to prove residence. For a student who moves around a lot such "proof of address" is necessary. |
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"expecting a large funds transfer from a Nigerian prince" LOL! So much of the crap in my spam box is so stupid that I look at it for entertainment every now and then.
Gmail does have a good filter onboard. |
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I could never imagine entering any information into a form I got in an email. I'm pretty surprised that he got that far. Still, it was pretty cool of Mueller to give this example, seeing as it makes him look bad! |
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the lesson of the day, is put a woman ahead of the FBI :) she won't get trick by silly emails :p |
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Some day I guess protecting your accounts and passwords will be common knowledge. I'm not sure how long away that day is but I hope it comes soon. |
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