February 26, 2006
-
Phishing
I love getting phishing email from the IRS, which contains a ‘click here’ link that would take you to IP address 200.21.49.67, which turns out to belong to a school in Bogota, Columbia. No doubt there are a few zombie computers on the school’s network, which pass your information along to some other faraway place.
I think human ingenuity is quite an amazing thing, and is nowhere more thoroughly expressed than in criminal activity. It’s a shame that whoever manages those zombie computers in Bogota isn’t as thoroughly expressing his or her ingenutiy, as well.
Comments (2)
i feel really sorry for the folks that fall for phishing. i sure hope they don’t get fleeced!
It’s unfortunate that people fall for these things, but as much as I feel sorry for the victim, I also wish that people would take a more self-responsible attitude toward the technology under their noses. It should be common knowledge that phishing goes on, and that an email from the IRS, not signed by an individual agent, telling you to click on a link to fill out a form… That should be easily, universally understood as suspect.
The computer lab in Bogota, and all computers hooked up to teh interwebs, should be made more secure, as well, lest they become crime scenes. Run the security updates, put up the firewall, filter the spam, and switch away from Microsoft products.
Without the zombie computers, there’s much less phishing in the first place. And thus, fewer victims for whom to feel sorry.