EARTHLINK billing warning

8/12/05

Don't think that the only time your institution could incur losses is when the phishing scam purports to be from you. Anytime the customer is tricked by any phishing scam into believing they should disclose sensitive banking information, you could be affected.

This one purports to be from my Internet service provider and I'm having to type it because copying and pasting it -- even into Word as unformatted text -- did the most bizarre things with it. Oh man. I just looked at the HTML code for the email. In a deliberate attempt to make it harder to copy and paste, they put groups of four letters into table data cells. I know that doesn't mean much to those of you who aren't HTML wonks, but this is pretty amazing. See screenshot below:




Here's what the message actually said:

Dear Earthline Customer,

During one of our regulator automatical verification procedures we've encountered
a technical problem, caused by the fact that we could not verify the information
that you provided during registration.

We urgently ask you to submit your information so that we could fully verify
your identity, otherwise an access to Earthlink services for your account will
be deactivated until you pass the verification process

Please use our secure online application to submit your information - apply here. [URL omitted]

Thank you for using our services,
Earthlink Payment Processing Department