IPS e-mail scam

[Click for a larger, scammier view.]

Really? Well, we’re always ordering things. And Elaine had just talked about Ryvita, which now can only be had from the UK — or is it from Ireland? I clicked on the tracking number, saw something odd in the browser’s address bar, and immediately closed the tab. No harm done.

Had I looked just a little more closely, I would have realized that I was looking at a scam e-mail. Notice the logo: IPS, not UPS. There are various shipping enterprises with the initials IPS, some more reliable than others, but they have their own logos. Notice too the stilted phrasing: “We are here to inform you.” And the clumsy syntax at the bottom:

click here for requesting to stop receive future email messages Or write us to, &c.

Had I bothered to check the sender’s e-mail address, hiding behind “UPS,” I would have seen numerical gibberish, and I would have known scam. Had I seen the large block of textual gibberish hiding behind the message’s images, I would have known scam. I should have known scam anyway: enough evidence was right in front of me.

Don’t get fooled.

*

Obvious afterthought: Had I not been reading this e-mail on a phone, I almost certainly would have noticed the fine print and clumsy syntax.

[This scam was publicized last year on reddit.]