Bad phishing

Phishing -- sending misleading e-mails in the hope of getting confidential information (e.g. bank details, account names and passwords) -- is a mean and nasty thing to do: You're preying on the gullible and/or the technologically uninformed.

That said: The following is the pretty pathetic attempt that drifted into my e-mail in-box a few days ago (my comments are afterwards):


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Gmail Team Admin Head
Date: Sat, Mar 8, 2008 at 9:27 PM
Subject: Gmail Warning; Unused Account Removal,Update Your Account Information .


Dear Account User,
This Email is from Gmail Team and we are sending it to every Gmail
User Accounts Owner for safety. we are having congestions due to the
anonymous registration of yahoo accounts so we are shutting down some
Gmail accounts and your account was among those to be deleted.We are
sending you this email to so that you can verify and let us know if
you still want to use this account.If you are still interested please
confirm your account by filling the space below.Your User
name,password,date of bith and your country information would be
needed to verify your account.

Due to the congestion in all Gmail users and removal of all unused
Gmail Accounts, Gmail would be shutting down all unused Accounts, You
will have to confirm your E-mail by filling out your Login Information
below after clicking the reply button, or your account will be
suspended within 24 hours for security reasons.

* Username/Email ID: ........

* Password: .........................

*Verify Password:....................

*Alternate Email ID:.....................

* Date of Birth: ................................

* Country Or Territory: ..........................

After following the instructions in the sheet, your account will not
be interrupted and will continue as normal. Thanks for your attention
to this request. We apologize for any inconveniences.

Warning!!! Account owner that refuses to update his/her account after
two weeks of receiving this warning will lose his or her account
permanently.


Thanks for using Gmail
GmailTeam

..............................................
http//:www.gmail.com
.............................................


My comments:

1) What do they mean by "the anonymous registration of yahoo accounts"? That's just gibberish.

2) I love how, in the opening paragraph, they say they'll need your "date of bith". (Hard to say: I've "bithed" so many times...) Seems like a **real** e-mail from Google's tech team would've gone through some sort of spellchecker.

3) They don't even have the I.T. savvy to create a rogue website with an online form -- they want you to fill in the blanks **in the e-mail** and e-mail it back. So, Gmail HQ is gonna have hundreds of data-entry folks copying and pasting the responses into the Gmail database...?

4) Love how they reversed the ":" and the "//" in the URL (at the very bottom). Good attention to detail. I'm sure the Google I.T. folks would have the URL mis-typed in their auto-signature.


I notice that the return e-mail address is an actual e-mail account. Naturally, any old person can ask for any account name that's not already taken ("CEO_of_gmail@gmail.com", anyone?).

I wonder if Google/Gmail will kill the account?


--GG