[ale] New style of email attack?

DJPfulio at jdpfu.com DJPfulio at jdpfu.com
Wed May 4 09:15:12 EDT 2022


Were any of those emails available on a smartphone?  That's a much easier target to harvest contacts.

And don't assume that small contractors are very secure. That would be the exception.

The way I deal with these things is to insist that all business happens using snail-mail and voice calls.

I don't text or email with businesses.  That completely removes the need to worry about any of these sorts of attacks.

That, and I setup a different email alias for each new company, if they insist on having an email, but I'm very, very, clear that nothing official should be sent in that way and that I don't read those emails.  They make a note in my account - or at least claim they do.  Dropped an Natural Gas supplier when they tried to force me to paperless billing.  I don't do work that way.

I suspect most people won't choose to make the same trade-offs, but it is possible.



On 5/3/22 20:52, Neal Rhodes via Ale wrote:
> We've seen two instances of what might look like a new flavor of
> phishing attack.
> 
> My wife got an email ostensibly from a local HVAC contractor we have
> used in the past, asking her to click on a link to view an RFP and
> see if she wants to work with them on it.  She knew enough to smell a
> rat and delete it.
> 
> And today, I got an email from a campground in Canada where I made a
> reservation, asking for me to buy an Amazon Gift card for their
> family 'cause they had a heart attack, and they will pay me back.
> In that case, the reply address was XXXXXXX at outlook.com, when in fact
> the real emails from the park were sent from
> XXXXXXX at somethingsomething.ca.
> 
> It's like some attack is floating around which just harvests
> combinations of To/From email addresses, and they blast out various
> attempts to fool people.
> 
> I've only seen a couple like that.  Do I just not get out much?
> 
> Is this ringing a bell?
> 
> Neal _______________________________________________ Ale mailing
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