“I h4×0r3d j00″ means “I hacked you” in hacker jargon and you really don’t want to have this pop up on your cell phone screen.

While on the subject of hacking, Insider just received this from someone claiming to be Wells Fargo. Unless Wells has lowered their standards for hiring (which is certainly possible given the state of public schools in California), I’d say this is phishing:

Dear Customers:

The New Wells Fargo Online Banking Security Guarantee Private Identity Protection And Insurance Policy is on. Since your security is our top priority,We guarantee that you will be covered 100% for any funds removed from your accounts without your approval.(2007 Insurance) While using our Online Banking or Bill Pay service, This includes funds removed as a result of online theft of your username or passwords,subject to your personal password protection. We use the latest Security measures to ensure that your Online Banking Account opened with us is highly safe and Secure and to Guarantee you that if you are a victim of Identify theft, You’ll be covered for certain items by our Identity Fraud Expense Coverage at no additional cost this coverage is not available to Canada residents.

To be a part of these new New Online Banking Development, you have to be a Registered Member which is Total Free.
Your Online Account files will be monitored each business day You’ll be sent a notification within 1 business days when changes occurs on your account. To be Registered you have to be a Online Banking user, and if you are already using the online banking then you have to register you account details with our online monitoring teams file where you will be alerted from when changes occurs in your account.

My question is that if you are going to go to the effort to phish probably hundreds of thousands (millions?) of email accounts, can’t you find just one competent English speaker to clean up your fake letters?

It turns out that criminals are doing just that. According to a link provided by Flying Hamster, organized gangs are recruiting the next generation of internet criminals by approaching undergraduates on university campuses. They offer to pay their education in exchange for their services. Remember when cheating on campus was copying someone else’s exam? Boy those days are gone. The referenced article goes on to say that notwithstanding the phishing email that Insider got (above), cyber-criminals are increasing turning to mobile phones for their scams, hence the warning about “I h4×0r3d j00″. Oh boy.

tags: phishing

This entry was posted on Friday, December 8th, 2006 at 1:26 pm by Insider and is filed under How Not To Succeed In Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.