fraud
This morning I received not one, but two pieces of spam that went above and beyond your normal scummy spam. In these two, the spammer was pretending to represent Citibank in an effort to capture my bankcard number and PIN. I'm pretty damn sure that this is a felony in the United States. Unfortunately, the mail appears to have originated from someone's cable modem in the Netherlands. As if the gross typos and spelling errors weren't enough to raise a red flag, I canceled my own citibank credit card at least a year ago. So even if I was foolish enough to fall for this scam, I wouldn't have a card to use to provide the information.
For your amusement, here is a copy of one of the offending messages, with full header. Note that I've replaced my email address with _REMOVED_, all the rest of the email is unaltered:
[ ]{style="font-family: monospace;"}
::: {style="margin-left: 20px;"}
X-Apparently-To: _REMOVED_ via 66.218.93.8; Sat, 10 Jan 2004 07:21:09 -0800
Return-Path: <[email protected]>
Received: from 82.72.184.131 (HELO cp421246-a.roose1.nb.home.nl) (82.72.184.131) by mta112.mail.sc5.yahoo.com with SMTP; Sat, 10 Jan 2004 07:21:05 -0800
Received: from citibank.com (mail3.citigroup.com [199.67.141.129]) by cp421246-a.roose1.nb.home.nl (Postfix) with ESMTP id FECABF4338 for _REMOVED_ Sat, 10 Jan 2004 10:18:48 -0500
Message-ID: \6.0.0.22.1.20040110101848.2b93abcf\@citibank.com
X-Sender: extrinsically\@mail3.citigroup.com
X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 6.0.0.22
Reply-to: CITIBANK <[email protected]>
Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 10:18:48 -0500
To: "Beemer" _REMOVED_
From: "CITIBANK" <[email protected]>
Subject: Citibank E-MAIL Veerification - _REMOVED_
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-AntiVirus: checked by AntiVir MailGate (version: 2.0.1.10; AVE: 6.20.0.1; VDF: 6.20.0.46; host: cp421246-a.roose1.nb.home.nl)
Content-Length: 649
Dear Online-Citibank Cleints,
This email was ssent by the Citi-Bank sevrer to veerify your email
adderss. You must cltpemoe this proecss by clicking on the link
below and enttering in the litle window your Citi-bank ATM
card number and PiN that you use on local ATM.
That is done for your peotcrtion -g- becourse some of our members no
lgnoer have access to their email adsseerds and we must verify it.
To veerify your e-mail address and akcess your Citi-Bank account, click on
the link below. If nothing hapenps when you clic on the link -A copy
and passte the link into the address bar of your web browser.
http://www.citibank.com/?2K3TdttX40YcgqnKQ9uZ0BeWcJtPx77zRat5DW2HW1UdtiYjrt
Thank you for using Citibank!
This automatic email snet to: _REMOVED_
Do not reply to this email.
jr5zohiR8PZfoRoTY2O1
:::
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In other news, I watched Raising Arizona last night. Another Coen brothers film. It was weird, really really weird. I'd say it was better than Blood Simple (what I watched last Friday night), simply because it was amusing at times. But it was still a truly bizarre film about kidnappers, and people kidnapping from the kidnappers.
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Looks like this scam has hit the news now too.