all the heist, none of the hype

i always wonder if people still fall for this shit…

the full body of the email says this:

Our Valued Customer,

Security Upgrade

We are contacting you to remind you Of our New Security Upgrade in your Online Banking. In accordance with BBVA Compass Bank Internet Banking User Agreement and to ensure that your account is secure and updated for our New Activity, access to your account has been limited. Your account access will remain limited until this issue has been resolved please log in your account or click on the link bellow:

Click Here To Proceed

what’s scary is it sounds official. and i could see people “clicking here” to proceed so they can free up their online account access – who wants restrictions when it comes to getting your dough, right? but if you hover over the link on the “click here” you end up seeing this at the bottom of your screen

(which for all who don’t know, you can do this anywhere in any email with a link to see where it’s gonna send you before you click it…it will show on the bottom left corner of your screen…)

notice before all the slashes start (which will indicate file names on the site, in this case a file that makes the site you’re on look more official like the actual bank site) the true url (i.e. web address) ends with “.ir”. we all know “.com”, “.net”, and “.org” as well as “.edu” and “.gov”, but as the web keeps growing and growing addresses keep running out, and all countries got their own code to end websites from their country – “.uk” for england, “.us” for the united states.

but “.ir”? give ya’ a hint…it ain’t from ireland.

it’s iran. you’d be giving iran all your bank account info.

i didn’t click on the link for three reasons…

1. i’m not stupid enough to think this was real
2. i’m not a customer of bbva compass
3. i could see where the link goes and know iran’s url suffix

while my dad is FAR from stupid, he IS a bbva compass customer, he’s seventy, and he’s not as computer literate as he’d like to think he is…this coulda REALLY fucked his world up.

so think before you click – and NEVER fall for this kinda shit.