Yesterday I received one of those phishing e-mails. It was so fake and poorly written that if I were still teaching freshman English at the University of North Texas, it would have warranted a big, fat, red F! It did give me a chuckle though as I had my morning coffee.
It was from Chase Bank. Now obviously this not-so-bright person doesn’t realize that all I have to do is to click on the from to see his real email address. It started out “Dear Costumer.” Costumer? Perhaps he thinks that I am a world-famous pole dancer and need to stock up on kinky costumes or that I run a Halloween costume shop?
“We determine that your card is not secured.” Apparently this genius dozed off in class the day we talked about verb tenses! “For your protection, we’ve suspended your credit card. To lift the suspension, click here and follow the instructions indicate to update your credit card.” Of course, I hastened to click here to be sure that he had all of my information and also to expose my computer to all kinds of malware. Did you catch indicate? There go those pesky verb forms again!
“Notice: If you fail this procedure before 3 Days, we will be forced to suspend your card indefinitely, because of the risk which can contain.” Is it me, or does that not quite read right?
I did at that point call the real Chase Bank using the real phone number on my real Chase Visa card to inquire whether or not the bank followed up on this kind of bogus email. A very nice young lady assured me that the Fraud and Abuse Department did indeed follow-up on all of these types of fraudulent messages. As requested, I forwarded the email to the bank for its investigation. The Customer Service representative and I did have a good laugh, especially when I told her that I hoped that the Chase bankers used better English than this illiterate person.
The moral to this story is that if you want to be a successful con artist, please learn to spell and use proper English! I have to wonder if the author of this message is a non-English speaker who is just trying to make an honest living scamming the public or if, even scarier thought, he is a product of the American public education system.
Forgive me for cutting this short today. I have to hurry and send all of my information to the nice Nigerian princess who is going to deposit two million dollars for me as soon as I send her all of my bank account information!
©2016, The Eclectic Grandma
