A Slightly More Relavant Spam Warning

[mishalak]

I think due to its name my friends might be particularly vulnerable to this scam. I recently got an email from FanBox.com saying that someone had uploaded pictures for me to see. I dislike social networking things at the best of times so I didn't click on the link and that is a good thing as it is a scam that propagates by harvesting email addresses. I expect, from the name, that it was either my brother in law or one of his relatives who fell for it and that is why I got the email. I was inspired to google it and the second result was this page on FanBox. But due to the name I suspect people who identify themselves as fans might be more vulnerable than with most such scams, thus this post. Also I was rather surprised that google did not immediately recognize this email for what it is rather than it coming to my inbox. They're not perfect, but google is usually pretty 'smart' about such things and I would have thought the way it propagates would have been rather obvious to the algorithms that look for such things.

Comments

[onyxlynx]

Yeesh. I don't think I'd open it, but only because I tend to be paranoid twitchy about email from strangers.

Which reminds me: I had wanted to make a comment about not being a fan, but I kept putting it off. And I'm still mulling it, but the piece that seems clear is that "fan" is more a sensibility than anything to do with what one reads or who one hangs with.

Have a peaceful weekend (Solstice! Woot!) (Ahem).

[mishalak]

Well at least in this case the name was vaguely familiar as someone who may have emailed me once before or something so that made it a bit more dangerous. But my response to social networking sites is pretty much, "Go away, we don't want any."