Friday, January 30, 2009

Free advice to email scams: invest in a proofreader

About every other week I get an email purporting to be from RBC, telling me that something has gone wrong with my account. Aside from the obvious fact that, in the event of a serious problem, a bank isn't about to email you (along with the fact that I also get comparable email notices from Scotiabank, the Bank of Montreal and TD, none of which I have accounts with), there are often little clues in the messages themselves. I received this one this morning:

Your access to Online Services has been suspended. Due to a miss-match access code between your Security information. To enable you continue accessing your online account it will only take you few minutes to re-activate your account. Click on the link below and you will taken straight to where you can activate your account.

Now, I grant you that the last few months have certainly thrown the intelligence of those working at banks in question, but the grammar on display here is quite impressive. And by "impressive" I mean laugh-inducingly appalling.

Then again, the justifications by John Thain for handing out billions of taxpayer dollars in bonuses while the world economy goes to hell in a handcart do sort of boil down to "Me want!"

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