Is Windows Live Hotmail about to close my account?

Leo.. teach me English.. :)

As many of my regular readers will be quick to point out, I'm far from the best English teacher.

07-Sep-2009

Hi Leo,

I too am amazed at how easily people fall for these scams. They are so obviously not legitmate, especially the example you have here. I have seen some very good attempts at phishing attacks that have fooled staff in my company and I have tried my best to educate peoeple that bascially a big company will not email you for this type of information ever, but people get scared by the threat so easily. All they need to do is contact the company itself to verify if the email is legitimate before they hastily hit reply. i think as a rule if any email has a threatening consequence if you don't do what it says then that should be alarm bells anyway.

What about those three exclamation points? EH??? :-)

How many "phisherman" do you suppose are reading and correcting their "phishing" style using your examples?

Based on history, I'd say ZERO. I'm certainly not the first to have explained it in such detail and it's still coming on strong.

09-Sep-2009

"...whomever wrote this didn't really know what they were doing"? Try "whoever". "Whomever" is accusative case (the object of the clause), whereas in this case the usage is nominative case (the subject of the clause) and "whoever" is appropriate. But at least it is not as bad as the common mis-usage where "whoever" (also "who") is used as BOTH subject and object!

You only have to read forums (not this one :-) to see that the general standard of English usage is appalling. So many recipients of this type of spam probably would not appreciate the grammatical points you make in this article. And for many recipients, English would not be their first language, and they might think that the spam is actually good English!

"whomever wrote this"???
just goes to prove that grammar mistakes are not always proof of a scam

Of course not. I wouldn't claim to write English perfectly (which keeps many nitpicks quite happy ;-) - my point is the sheer quantity and severity of the horrible English in the scam. PLEASE don't let my minor mistakes, which are inevitable, get in the way of understanding that point.

09-Sep-2009

One other reaction I get from my supportees when they get an email or pop-up ad like this is "OMG I have a virus I can't use ma computer anymore until it's cleaned up*

As for Leo's grammar. Cut him some slack. So what if he's got a terminal grammar condition. He's a techie not a grammar geek.

If you just want to dis Leo's use of English, maybe you've just been phished. :-) (Sure, official emails often have occasional mistakes; it happens.) Picky, picky, picky!

this one comment gave me a good laugh;

How many "phisherman" do you suppose are reading and correcting their "phishing" style using your examples?

Based on history, I'd say ZERO. I'm certainly not the first to have explained it in such detail and it's still coming on strong.

Posted by: Pat Van Dusseldorp at September 8, 2009 10:08 AM

I'd have to agree with Leo here, because most of the scams that are sent out by "phishermen" are usually a cut / copy & paste job, into the new scam email, and just slightly modified to fit the new scam, be it your hotmail, or gmail, yahoo mail, etc. accounts
or the:
"pleas send me your bank account info so I can depost $1m US into;"
scams

Microsoft is not immune to grammatical idiocy either. The one we all see all the time, and that grates on me every time I see it,is on the Control Panel Add/Remove Programs application; i.e., "Please wait while the list is being populated." It's either "Please wait -- the list is being populated" or "Please wait while the list is populated." Also, "populated" is kind of a weird term to apply to something that's not a physical place being occupied by a certain number of animals or something at least organic.