AmEx SPAM

by Michael Seese

What's that old adage?

If at first you don't succeed,
try
try
try
try
try
try
try
again.

Yesterday's SPAM found 5 messages in my inbox. Today it was 7.

On the surface, the email looks reasonably convincing.

But, a few things stand out. So to give these guys the MST3K treatment:

1. The From: is a8400592e@michaelseese.com   Wait... what?

2. The To: is AmericanExpreco@welcome.aexp.com  So I'm sending an email to American Ex...preco?

3. Our records indicate that you recently used your American Express card on Novermber 06, 2014. Novermber? (Actually I didn't catch that one. But the spell check did when I pasted it in here.) OK, but this notification came over two weeks later.

4. For your security, new charges on the accounts listed above may be declined. Continuing the thought above, I've had no trouble using the card for the past 18 days. And what account listed above? Does anyone else see an account listed above? (In "fairness" to the spammers, you can see a big gap above "Dear Customer" which appears to be an image that my email program blocked. Still, if I can't see it...)

All in all, this one is pretty lame. On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give it a D-minus.

Triple Play SPAM Day

By Michael Seese

At the risk of jinxing myself, I don't get all that much SPAM. So I was surprised to find not one, not two, but three SPAM emails waiting for me yesterday.

If I may go into MST3K mode:

Yeah, my bank's employees all have names which require the Cyrillic alphabet.

This one almost got me, to be honest, mainly because I did just book airline travel. But it was not with American Airlines and, as I suggest when I teach "Infosec 101," hover over the link to reveal where it goes: hivewebdesign.com.au. Hmmm. That doesn't sound like American Airlines. (I intentionally did not show the images, since that potentially can be risky.)

I like this "Reply To" email address: 

r-ykqzmplmqbcvtkqgmgglkcpmcjkvgwwzptczmwkpyzldbjvqpl@members.playboystore.com. 

They say that size does matter, after all. 

Until next time...