OneMind

I got an email this morning from CIA Director Leon Panetta. No bull. Actually heard from the top spook. I mean, he does make his home in Monterey, so maybe he just thinks we’re buds or something.

Seems he wanted to warn me about a Nigerian email scam and to let me know that the CIA is behind some of these activities on behalf of the Nigerian government. So I should not send these thieves any more money but rather send only $650 directly to the CIA and they’d take care of me for sure.

Wow.

I can’t believe anyone falls for these ludicrous phishing scams but I’m obviously wrong or they’d stop doing them. This note was so full of typos and grammatical errors that you wouldn’t believe it came from anyone intelligent. Or even from a relatively ignorant public official (which, I hasten to point out, Mr. Panetta is definitely not).

It is so easy to detect these things. In this case, e.g., the From email address purported to be infonews@cia.gov (which may even be a legitimate email address for all I know or care) but the Reply-to: address was centralintelligence@gazeta.pl. Which means it originates with or at least uses a server in Poland. Anyone answering this deserves to lose the $650 (plus a lot more that is yet to come, I’m sure).The only way I know to stop spam and phishing schemes dead is to sign up for LOQMail secure private email. (Disclaimer: I’m an investor in WebLOQ.)

Meanwhile, I hope the CIA tracks down this culprit and finds some suitable discipline for his nefarious scheming.

Posted via email from danshafer’s posterous