Hot Flashes - Phishing for a Beached Whale

By Sue Langenberg

I was actually surprised to see the word “phishing” in my current Word dictionary.  Usually a squiggly red line shows up with my high school English teacher wagging a finger from the screen and saying, “naughty, naughty.”  But now even the Queen’s English acknowledges phishing as commonplace.

Phishing is the ultimate fraud where the phisher phishes for phish that might take the bait and provide revealing credit card information.  The hook comes out of the screen seemingly innocent looking, but has greedy palms rubbing behind it.

The trouble with online phishers is that they seem to do very little research about the phish.  It might be a rich phish, poor phish or just a beached whale, the latter being the most difficult to steal.

It is one thing to be mugged on the street and robbed of valuables on your person.  A very disappointed mugger would want to turn in his mean badge for a smiley face if my “valuables” were confiscated.  That would include about two dollars and some change, a check book with moths flying out and a stray grocery list that says the same thing every week.  Some valuables.  The pockets might be lined with a little lint.

Then you wonder about all the online passwords and how safe it is to shop at ordinary sites.  There are sneaky phishing emails that try to lure you into a dialogue to “help” them update their records and, “by the way, what is your Social Security Number and blood type?”

It makes me wonder what would happen if I fought phish with phish.  Say, create some numbers that phishers would fall for, then phish them for their numbers.  “You can have this identity if I can have yours and, by the way, how much do you weigh?”  I have been tempted to create a phony number just to see where it might go.  But then I would worry that the false number might belong to a real person out there.

About physical identity, the phisher would have to check into a theatre makeup department to fashion a stack of chins, grayish frizz for hair and a stomach hanging out.  By the time a photo was taken for the new identity, the camera would break and the license photographer would snicker.  The phisher would change his mind and turn in the card.  No self-respecting phisher would want to look like that.

Or let’s say a phisher wants my numbers to run away on a shopping spree.  Ha!  The first thing that would arrive in my mail would be notices of “purchase denied, due to lack of proper credit” and a note that says, “Sue, we knew that wasn’t your size!”

If a debit card were stolen from me, the ATM would deny an attempt for cash along with a note that says, “Don’t make the bank laugh, she has never even seen that amount of cash!”

Or like that wacked out shyster who convinced everyone that he was the “French Rockefeller,” but really a street person with an uncanny ability to con people out of their real estate holdings.  Steal my house from under me and my advice would be that the foundation needs expensive work.  Do that and also throw in a half dozen new windows to replace the rattling ones.  After that, there is still siding to do, garage door, roof, lions, tigers and bears (oh my).  By all means, steal my house!

My advice to phisherman is that there are a lot of phish in the sea, but some phish that you don’t want to catch.

Can you relate? If you would like to comment on Hot Flashes, Sue can be reached via E-mail at thewritehag@yahoo.com, or pa@pacc-news.com.

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