Going phishing

I've heard on the news about people getting emails from what looks to be their bank telling them that they need to sign onto a certain website to verify their account information. (I believe the term for that kind of thing is phishing.) I hadn't seen one of those before last week.

Last week we got an email from "Bank of America" telling us that there had been fraudulent activity on our account, and that we needed to log onto http://59.27.203.5/boa/online

/online_secure/index.php within 48 hours or they would disable our account. (The link no longer works.) There are a few things wrong with that. I assume that Bank of America would have you log onto bankofamerica.com instead of an IP Address. The return address is bankofamerica@yahoo.com That and, ummm, we don't have a Bank of America account. Way to know your intended target, Mr. Scam Artist.

The website looked pretty close to what Bank of America's site actually looks like, so I could see how some would be tricked into that. It was mildly exciting because this is the second scam email I've ever gotten. The first one I got was about helping Meka Bakasu Te Pemako, a Nigerian Prince, receive his inheritance. I'm still waiting on my cut of his $12.5 million.