> And if you should receive a legitimate email from an institution you 
> do
> business with that contains a link and asks you to follow that link 
> and log
> in, you could send them a note asking them to remove that link from 
> the
> email and instead read up on phishing, and instead of the link add 
> some
> phishing education to their email...

I recently received a higher than average quality phishing email.

It's common to receive emails offering "part time work" where you are 
to be the agent for a company who wish you to receive payments on 
their behalf and forward them to them. For this you get say 5% of the 
payment. You are in effect laundering stolen funds - they steal funds 
from eg US accounts but are unable to remit these internationally due 
to certain safeguards - they need a real person in the loop. They want 
you to be the sucker.

This email was one of those BUT, unlike most, the email address went 
to where it appeared to - which is unusual. Further - the website with 
the same name seemed to be that of a real company with many linked 
live pages, real merchandise, special offers, information pages, 
contact us pages etc. All seemed VERY real. I was certain it wasn't so 
kept looking for a giveaway. Aha! - they claimed to be in California 
but store hours were quoted in EST (Eastern Standard Time). I found  a 
line  from a page which seemed likely to be fairly unique, and asked 
Google. Bingo! - an electronic retailer in Florida had a near 
identical website. They also included a page on internet fraud which 
was strangely missing on the scam site.

So I emailed the Florida firm and also filed an FBI complaint.

Scam site is still there a day later, so nobody seems too fussed about 
it.

        www.digitalsplanet.com

They get value two ways.
email respondees provide money laundering.
And anyone 'buying' from the site gets their credit card details 
stolen.

Here's their 'contact us" page with EST store hours for a California 
store

        http://www.digitalsplanet.com/contact_us/contact_us.htm

Here's the "real" site.
Less broken - but still some bad pages.
Flying bee-men missing from copy site :-)

        http://www.plasmacity.com/

        http://www.plasmacity.com/CONTACT_US/CONTACT_US.htm



        RM

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