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November 6, 2005

EMAIL Hell - A New Trick in the Phishing Playbook

by Ferdinand T Cat

The Conservative Cat Web Empire has been hit hard in the past week by Paypal phishing emails. These are spam emails telling you that someone has accessed your account, or a new user has been added, or that you've been chosen to test out a new security system. The emails contain a link that takes you to a site that will attempt to gather information that can be used to steal your identity.

Most people know that before you click on a link, you should check it to insure it's authentic. For example, if the link says mailworks.biz instead of paypal.com, you know it's a fake. Modern EMAIL clients allow you to look at the actual destination of a link without clicking on it. The phishers are aware of this, and have taken steps. Here's the link address in one of the new EMAILs.

http://www.paypal.com.loginpaypalaccountverifyer.com/webscr.php?cmd=LogIn

The target URL looks almost correct because it starts with www.paypal.com; however, the real domain in this case is loginpaypalaccountverifyer. The legitimate-looking part of the URL is actually a sub-domain.

So, be careful, as always, but make sure you read the whole URL before you click the link. The bad guys are trying new tricks all the time.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat


# At Sun 3:50 PM | Permalink | Trackback URI | Comments (1) | More EMAIL Hell

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I've received several of these phishing spam mails over the last year. Like you, I mouse over the link to see how it appears, but not to see whether I should click on it. I'll always log into Paypal directly if I need to access my account. I just want to make sure it's phishing before I forward it to spoof@paypal.com .


Posted by: FTS at November 6, 2005 6:06 PM

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