I've Been Phished!

Wow. I've read a bunch of articles about keeping yourself safe on the internet. I thought I was at least a little savvy when it came to phishing. I couldn't believe that some people would actually fall for something like that.

Today it was my turn to receive an e-mail! I couldn't believe it! ME! Nothing fun ever happens to me.

My regular bank is Fifth Third Bank. The e-mail looked as if it came from Fifth Third Bank but there were just too many flags for it to actually be from my bank. The verbage in the e-mail stated that these instructions were sent to and followed by "all" Fifth Third Customers. I can't imagine that "all" Fifth Third customers have e-mail, let alone an e-mail account that the bank has on file. Plus, there was a link in the e-mail that they wanted me to follow to update all of my personal information for their software upgrade. We all know we should never follow links. You should always pull up the website in a new browser.

So, I did the responsible thing and notified my bank about this e-mail. They asked that I forward the e-mail to their security department which I did. It just tickled me that I finally got something cool in e-mail! Ron gets the Nigerian scam e-mails often but me, never!

We were talking about this e-mail after work tonight and I was anxious to follow the link and see what the bogus form looked like. The amazing thing was they actually took some of the actual verbage and the logo from the Fifth Third Bank site to try to make it look more real.

Every single question that was asked, Ron and I sat here and made up answers. From the account number and password to everything else.

In case anyone wants to know more about me, here are some of the made up answers we gave.

My name is Rosilind.
I have two pets named Killer and Twinkie.
I was born in Texas.
Mother's maiden name is Gonzalez.

We had a lot of fun filling out this form. It gave me a little satisfaction picturing some poor slob sitting in front of his computer, rubbing his hands together, thinking he had another sucker on the line.

Ron and I were just talking about this a few minutes ago when I started this blog entry and we thought we'd go and play again and fill out another form.

Imagine my surprise that the website is now not available. At least I can say now I've been phished!