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Every month I get email formulated like this: "dear grg12 you have founds on your account... click here to go to paypal...". Looks like clear case of phishing to me so I asked paypal about it. And the answer is - the email is legit, our marketing team sent it, you can easily distinguish it from phishing cause it contains your full name.
Am I stupid to think it's a bad practice?
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It's from Paypal, so it's fishing. Right?
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What have they found on your account?
"You'd have to be a floating database guru clad in a white toga and ghandi level of sereneness to fix this goddamn clusterfuck.", BruceN[ ^]
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lousy language skills and 13 cents 
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You have 13 cents?! You, you capitalist you!
How do we preserve the wisdom men will need,
when their violent passions are spent?
- The Lost Horizon
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That's not the only bad practice.
When I got a phone call saying "Hi, it's [my bank] security department, we think we've found a problem with your account" and I replied "can you prove that's who you are?" all they say is "Well, we called you" as if that proves it is legitimate. (It was them, and there was a problem, but I had to go into branch to find out for sure).
Why can't a bank prove it's them instead of phishers when they call you? They expect me to prove who I am when I call them! And boy, do they get snotty if you try to get them to prove who they are! 
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Not just the banks - lots of companies will call you and then demand you answer their security questions before they'll talk to you. 
I once spent 40+ minutes on the phone to a supervisor at Sky trying to make him understand why I wouldn't give out my account password when their representative called me unexpectedly. I was told it was for "Data Protection" reasons, and they couldn't even set up a password to give me when they called, because they can't access the records until I've answered their security questions.
Then there's the idiots who tell you to call them back, and try to give you the number to call. Because a scammer won't have his own phone number waiting for your call, right?
Anyone who calls me unexpectedly needs to prove who they are before I give them any information. If they won't, then I call them back on a known-good number, using a different phone. It might sound paranoid, but I've read too many horror stories about scammers to take the chance.
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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Richard Deeming wrote: Then there's the idiots who tell you to call them back, and try to give you the number to call. Because a scammer won't have his own phone number waiting for your call, right?
If you have a landline and this happens - even if the number they give you is legit you should wait for 10 minutes.
Scammers can wait for you to put the phone down and leave their phone off the hook, this means that your line is still connected to them and when you call the local police(for example)the call will go straight through to them.
The 10 minutes allows for the phone system to drop the connection so that when you do dial a number the call goes to the number you dial.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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That's why I said that I call the company on a known-good number using a different phone line.
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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I never, ever, answer a phone call unless I know who is calling, and I want to talk to them.
Everyone else can leave me a voicemail and if I need to talk to them I will call back. Maybe.
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
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OriginalGriff wrote: Why can't a bank prove
Do you want a minimum-wage call center jockey to know how to do that?
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If I get a call from an overseas call centre (usually India) and they start with "Hello, my name is Mary" (or John, or Patricia etc), I ask them to repeat themselves a couple of times. If they continue using the name, I ask if that is really their name and after a bit of cajoling they will usually admit that their name is something like Sanjay or Srikanth etc. At this point I refuse to speak to them further on security grounds and demand to be put through to a supervisor. When I ask why their operatives have begun a conversation with a blatant lie, they usually say that they use English names because us poor Brits can't handle Indian names. At this point I usually accuse them of being racist, which really gets their back up!
I ask them if they would continue the conversation if I had said that my name wasn't Chris Quinn, but Krishna Bhanji. They then always say that they would end the conversation on data protection grounds, but find it puzzling that I would want to do the same.
=========================================================
I'm an optoholic - my glass is always half full of vodka.
=========================================================
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Grg12 wrote: Am I stupid to think it's a bad practice?
Depends on why you think it is. I get the same mails from PayPal and I can't say I've ever thought there was anything to warrant putting my tinfoil hat on.
I am not a number. I am a ... no, wait!
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Cause "click here" button is typical for phishing mail. Almost every day I get emails telling me that there's a problem with my credit card and I should "click here" to solve it. In most cases link leads to some suspicious .ru or .cz domain. Sometimes they even use Russian characters to create domain names looking similiar to correct ones. All serious banks warn against such emails - they never send "click here", if you want to visit their page you must type the address or use bookmark in your browser.
You may find such scam easy to avoid - but are you sure your parents will notice it?
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Well yeah, but it's not a phishing mail, is it? It's the genuine article. If PayPal withdrew them it wouldn't do anything to change the ones that are pretending to be PayPal or other companies. If people are already avoiding click heres then they won't click on PayPal's either (unless they recognise it for the genuine article). If they're not, then one less from PayPal would make no difference, and if they do click this one at least it won't take them to a scam site for a change!
In any event if the emails concern you (or your parents) then opt out of receiving them. As for my parents, my mother was 80 before she had a phone in the house and my father still thinks it's the work of the devil. Don't think email scams are ever likely to touch them!
I am not a number. I am a ... no, wait!
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Hi All,
While wasting time (I have an interview this afternoon, first of 2016!) My PC was on I was doing something else and my Mum saw the CP lounge and Bob at the top hence the question who is the little green man at the top, reply 'Bob', 'Oh, he has a name','Bob crashed at Roswell in 1947', 'oh, thats where the US airforce had a crash, in the X -files','Yes, that one, there is a whole back story'.
So can I have a link to the history of Bob that Chris did. Tried search for it and got no-where.
Glenn
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Thats the one I was looking for.
Cheers Glenn
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Quote: Tried search for it and got no-where
The truth is out there! 
How do we preserve the wisdom men will need,
when their violent passions are spent?
- The Lost Horizon
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During School days, I have tough time to wake my daughter (8 years ) on time. She will always ask for extra 5 minutes of "beauty sleep"( Her own words) in recursive fashion. Come weekend and when I want to sleep extra few hours or so , she almost wakes up in time or little earlier and wants breakfast immediately.
Any suggestion how to convince them to sleep extra during weekends ?
cheers,
Super
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Too much of good is bad,mix some evil in it
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I guess this a programming question of sorts!
Life is too shor
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I can see how its a programming question, but which section to post it?
cheers,
Super
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Too much of good is bad,mix some evil in it
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(a) It's a child process ==> software
(b) It should never be rebooted ==> not Windows
==> Probably a Linux/Android process.
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
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super wrote: Any suggestion how to convince them to sleep extra during weekends ?
Vodka
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That's for me
cheers,
Super
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Too much of good is bad,mix some evil in it
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