I Got Phished

As an expert on email spam filters, I should've known better. Someone had apparently sent me an e-card. It looked entirely legitimate, and was from a major sender of such e-cards. For the record, I hate e-cards. Please, never send me an e-card.

The message had been sent to an account I have with a popular webmail provider. Frequently I've found myself logged out of my account at inopportune times, and have had to re-log back in to view a message.

I clicked on the link to open the card, and suddenly I was back at my webmail provider's logon screen. I didn't think anything of it until about 1 second after I'd submitted my password.

Crap, I just got phished. The URL wasn't actually back to my mail provider. It was to some jack-ass URL designed to collect account information from suckers like myself.

Now they had my password. Fortunately I recognized what had happened, and immediately changed my logon information.

I can't say for sure what they were up to - but odds are they were out to hijack accounts in order to send unwanted mail. Email sent via stolen accounts is more difficult to block than messages sent through ISPs frequented by spammers.

SpamButcher is a Windows spam filter and can stop most phishing related email. It unfortunately can't catch quite all of it.

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