OT - WAY - OT

[Kenneth Brody]

Quoting Howard Wolowitz (Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:48:26 -0400):

> Sorry to bother the list but youse guys and gals are the only resource I
> have to pass this idea by.

You can take the boy out of Brooklyn, but you can't take Brooklyn out of
the boy?

> To discourage phishing via email what about replying to some of all of the
> requests for information with totally false data?
> They, thinking they have struck gold, will waste their time trying incorrect
> logins, passwords, account #s etc.  Sure it wasted your time too but if lots
> of people did it then they (the bad guys) would be busy 24 hours a day to no
> avail and maybe the number of phishing requests would go down.

I recall coming across a site that will automate this.  You give them the
URL of the phish, and they'll submit a zillion fake entries.  I have no
idea how effective such tactics are.  (The phishers will know that they
haven't "struck gold", but the idea is that the signal-to-noise ratio
will be so low as for them to not be able to distinguish the real data
from the fake.)

> My real question is - Is it safe to even follow the links?  (I do have virus
> protection but still ...)

I use SamSpade to first examine the site.  (You used to be able to do this
at http://samspade.org but the site is now very stripped down.  You can get
a Windows binary at <http://www.majorgeeks.com/Sam_Spade_d594.html> and use
your own computer to check things out.)

Hey, why not write something in filePro to grab the code from the site and
examine it?  [End shameless attempt to bring this around to filePro.]

My main concern with this is some phisher with too much time on his hands
can capture your IP address and try to launch a DoS attack against you.

-- 
KenBrody at BestWeb dot net        spamtrap: <g8ymh8uf001 at sneakemail.com>
http://www.hvcomputer.com
http://www.fileProPlus.com