> Dear customer
 >
 > Your Apple ID has been used to connect to iTunes from an iPhone 5
 > called "Christian's iPhone".
 >
 > Date: 16 September 2014 02:22:10
 > Operating System: iPhone 5, OS,7.0.3,11B511
 > If you recently connected with this device, you can ignore this
 > message.
 >
 > If you did not recenlty connect with an iPad, and you think someone
 > may have used your account, it would be more prudent to reset your
 > password.
 >
 > [SNIP PHISHING URL]
 >
 > Apple Technical Support

Make up your mind... is it an iPhone 5, or an iPad?

At least it didn't sound like it was translated by Google.

-- 
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
/*    flabreque    */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
/*        @        */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
/*   gmail.com     */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }

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On Wed, 17 Sep 2014 08:47:23 -0400, Francois Labreque wrote:

>> Dear customer
>  >
>  > Your Apple ID has been used to connect to iTunes from an iPhone 5
>  > called "Christian's iPhone".
>  >
>  > Date: 16 September 2014 02:22:10 Operating System: iPhone 5,
>  > OS,7.0.3,11B511 If you recently connected with this device, you can
>  > ignore this message.
>  >
>  > If you did not recenlty connect with an iPad, and you think someone
>  > may have used your account, it would be more prudent to reset your
>  > password.
>  >
>  > [SNIP PHISHING URL]
>  >
>  > Apple Technical Support
> 
> Make up your mind... is it an iPhone 5, or an iPad?
> 
> At least it didn't sound like it was translated by Google.

Actually, there was a really interesting article about this a little bit 
ago....

https://www.quora.com/Why-are-email-scams-written-in-broken-English 
explains it a bit, but isn't the article I saw a few weeks ago about this.

The article I saw explained that this type of poorly written e-mail 
filters out people who are not going to fall for the scam, meaning that 
of those who actually read it, they get about a 70% "conversion rate" (ie, 
70% of the people who don't immediately dismiss it as a scam end up at 
least starting the process).  Doesn't take many for it to be successful.

Jim

-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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Am Wed, 17 Sep 2014 13:37:42 -0400 schrieb Jim Henderson:

> Actually, there was a really interesting article about this a little bit
> ago....
> 
> https://www.quora.com/Why-are-email-scams-written-in-broken-English
> explains it a bit, but isn't the article I saw a few weeks ago about
> this.
> 
> The article I saw explained that this type of poorly written e-mail
> filters out people who are not going to fall for the scam, meaning that
> of those who actually read it, they get about a 70% "conversion rate"
> (ie,
> 70% of the people who don't immediately dismiss it as a scam end up at
> least starting the process).  Doesn't take many for it to be successful.
> 
> Jim

That is indeed interesting. It makes it in a crude way efficient 
concerning the wasted time overall.

Florian

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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> https://www.quora.com/Why-are-email-scams-written-in-broken-English 
> explains it a bit, but isn't the article I saw a few weeks ago about this.

But if the scam email is supposed to be an official email from a
company like Apple, deliberate mistakes seems like a strange choice.

On the other hand, many people fall for any scam, no matter how poorly
written, or what kind of email it might be. There's this story about
the admin of the computer system of a school who sent warning emails
to all the students. The email warned them to never answer emails
asking for login and password information, because the admins, or
anybody else, will never ask those via email (or any other non-secure
way). He put an example of such a scam message (clearly labeling it
as an example of what such a message would look like). He received
replies from many students with their login and password info, for
the simple reason that the example he put in the email asked for them,
regardless of the big warnings to never do that.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On Wed, 17 Sep 2014 16:34:46 -0400, Warp wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> https://www.quora.com/Why-are-email-scams-written-in-broken-English
>> explains it a bit, but isn't the article I saw a few weeks ago about
>> this.
> 
> But if the scam email is supposed to be an official email from a company
> like Apple, deliberate mistakes seems like a strange choice.

I agree, but that's kinda the point.  They don't want to waste time with 
people who know it's a scam.  They want targets who are going to look at 
it, go "seems legit to me" and follow up on it.  Enough people are just 
that stupid that they actually manage to make money with it.

On a planet with 7 billion people, a few of them are going to be that 
stupid.

> On the other hand, many people fall for any scam, no matter how poorly
> written, or what kind of email it might be. There's this story about the
> admin of the computer system of a school who sent warning emails to all
> the students. The email warned them to never answer emails asking for
> login and password information, because the admins, or anybody else,
> will never ask those via email (or any other non-secure way). He put an
> example of such a scam message (clearly labeling it as an example of
> what such a message would look like). He received replies from many
> students with their login and password info, for the simple reason that
> the example he put in the email asked for them,
> regardless of the big warnings to never do that.

Yep.

Jim



-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

Post a reply to this message

> I agree, but that's kinda the point.  They don't want to waste time with
> people who know it's a scam.

Sorry I don't see what they gain or how it benefits them by putting 
mistakes in the email. If a group of people only know it's a scam 
because of mistakes written in the text of the email, then they'd be 
better off not putting in those mistakes and having those people click 
the link to get whatever malware/spyware.

Unless they are assuming that group of people are much more likely to be 
running a machine without security holes and the cost of the bandwidth 
to try and install the malware outweighs any benefit they might get. 
Seems unlikely as they are probably using some stolen web server to host 
the files.

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On 17/09/2014 09:34 PM, Warp wrote:

> On the other hand, many people fall for any scam, no matter how poorly
> written, or what kind of email it might be. There's this story about
> the admin of the computer system of a school who sent warning emails
> to all the students. The email warned them to never answer emails
> asking for login and password information, because the admins, or
> anybody else, will never ask those via email (or any other non-secure
> way). He put an example of such a scam message (clearly labeling it
> as an example of what such a message would look like). He received
> replies from many students with their login and password info, for
> the simple reason that the example he put in the email asked for them,
> regardless of the big warnings to never do that.

Back when I was the admin, I sent round an email telling people to 
perform an upgrade, complete with pictures of what the various menu 
pages look like. I got a support call from one guy because when he 
clicked the button image in the email, nothing happened...

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Am 18.09.2014 09:10, schrieb scott:
>> I agree, but that's kinda the point.  They don't want to waste time with
>> people who know it's a scam.
>
> Sorry I don't see what they gain or how it benefits them by putting
> mistakes in the email. If a group of people only know it's a scam
> because of mistakes written in the text of the email, then they'd be
> better off not putting in those mistakes and having those people click
> the link to get whatever malware/spyware.

Scam is not phishing.

But yes, the question why those emails are so poorly written can also be 
asked for phishing emails.

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Am 18.09.2014 09:34, schrieb Orchid Win7 v1:

> Back when I was the admin, I sent round an email telling people to
> perform an upgrade, complete with pictures of what the various menu
> pages look like. I got a support call from one guy because when he
> clicked the button image in the email, nothing happened...

Yeah; I occasionally get that myself when editing screenshots...

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>> Back when I was the admin, I sent round an email telling people to
>> perform an upgrade, complete with pictures of what the various menu
>> pages look like. I got a support call from one guy because when he
>> clicked the button image in the email, nothing happened...
>
> Yeah; I occasionally get that myself when editing screenshots...

Or the classic we used to do at school, take a screenshot of a window 
and set it as the desktop wallpaper. Catches them out every time.

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