[ExI] Complex Phishing Schemes

[Kelly Anderson]

I have been amazed lately by the complexity of some of the phishing schemes
that are being employed out there. In one I encountered recently, a robot,
pretending to be a person, emailed me a picture of themselves (their human
anti-avatar?) with my name written on a piece of paper they were holding.
The font used made it look like hand writing and it was at a weird angle.
This was supposed to be evidence that they were real, and not a computer.
The script employed in this phishing scheme was rather sophisticated. The
note sent along in this conversation was complaining about the lack of
"real people" out there, and how glad they were to have figured out that I
was not a robot. It was very convincing for a while (it passed the Turing
test against me for about six messages interchanged). And I finally looked
up the image with my name on it using Google reverse image search,
something that I'd guess most people would not be aware enough to do, and I
encountered a description of the overall scheme. I had smelled a rat or I
wouldn't have done the reverse image lookup, but it was convincing for a
while.

For me, it is often a game to play along with these phishers of men to see
just how sophisticated they have gotten.

The game was up for me when I was asked for a credit card to "prove my age"
and "do a quick background check"... LOL... they were only going to charge
a dollar. That never works with me, but it could for some. The trick is
that they then bill you more using the same number for a site that would
embarrass some people to fight the charge.

I wonder if any of you have run into such convincing and/or sophisticated
phishing schemes, and if anyone has any thoughts as to how sophisticated
these schemes might get in the very near future.

I have also run into phishing schemes that were clearly people. I ask them
questions like what is the capital of Georgia, and get the right answers...
but even this should be able to be done by machines soon.

-Kelly
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