Monday, June 2, 2008

The Most Stupid Scam Attempt Ever

I received an e-mail claiming to be sent by my e-mail provider which happens to be the University of Turku. The mail was claimed to come from the admin but it was sent from a gmail-address. Here is the text:

Dear UTU Webmail Users

This message is from the UTU Webmail Computer Help Center to all UTU Webmail
Users, we are updating our basic data and e-mail center. We are canceling all
unused UTU Webmail account.

You are obliged to immediately verify and update your webmail account by immediately verifying with your e-mail identity. This will protect your e-mail was closed during this exercise. In order to confirm/update your e-mail, You are to provide the following information;

Account Registration Name :____________________

Account Registration Surname :____________________

E-mail Username :____________________

Email Password :____________________

Attention! UTU Webmail user who refuses to verify and Update your e-mail within
seven days of receipt of this notice, His e-mail address will be closed permanently.

Thank you for choosing UTU Webmail! Attention code: E55G99AAJ

Turun Yliopisto Management
©Turun Yliopisto. All rights reserved.

It was the first time I saw something like this, but the sender clearly did not realize some crucial facts:

  • It is a university address and the university is Finnish. They would never send an e-mail only in English. Besides it is written in very bad English even in my opinion and I am not a native English speaker.
  • The accounts are originally granted for a certain period. There is no reason for a verification like this. After graduating the addresses will be cancelled after a certain period
  • Every user knows the real address where e-mails like this should come from.

Of course there are all the other indications of scam like asking for the password. I sent this to the right address and found out that many others have received similar e-mails and now the login page warns about this. I really hope that also all the foreign university students realized that.

2 comments:

Steve Hayes said...

I got a similar one purporting to come from my ISP.

My university also provides forwarding addresses for alumni, so they can have one e-mail address for life.

Unknown said...

Please report all scams at http://www.allscamsforum.com