Saturday, October 5, 2019

Stilted language identifies a fraudulent email




















This week I received a fake phishing email telling me to fix my Apple ID. It was sent from wrong address and misworded as follows:

"Dear Customer:

Your Apple ID has been locked for security reason.

It looks like your account is outdated and requires to updated account ownership information, so we can protect your account and improve our service to maintenance your privacy.

To continue using your account again, we advise you to update the information before 24 hours or your account will be permanently locked.

Go to [Phony Web Address] and update your information.

Sincerely,

Apple Support"

In the second sentence the stilted phrases ‘requires to updated’ and ‘maintenance your privacy’ reveal that it was not written by an Apple employee at their U.S. headquarters as claimed. Instead it came someone with very little knowledge of English who did not even bother to check their grammar.

A painting by Jean Louis Gintrac was adapted from one at Wikimedia Commons.  

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