Wednesday, March 8, 2023

Challenge: Something Funny

(This post is part of the Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge. You can find links to other writers' answers over at Long and Short Reviews.)

Prompt: Something Funny That Happened To Me

So I've been thinking about this for a couple of days, and I'm honestly not coming up with much -- which is probably more a failure of memory on my part than a lack of Humorous Events in my life. But I went digging around, and finally came up with one: 

A couple of years back, I received a phishing scam in my inbox. It happens; usually it's not a big deal.

Problem is, this one was fairly convincing: the email address had been spoofed and looked more-than-reasonably legitimate, the text was clear and simple and didn't have a lot of typos (some, but not many, and nothing that was obviously a non-native English speaker). The only real "tell" was that if you hovered over the link, it went to something random and definitely not anywhere on our site/network. 

And I looked at that and thought, "Holy hell! If I got this, then other people are getting it too, and it's too good - somebody's going to fall for it." So I immediately stopped what I was doing, and composed a warning by forwarding the thing with the link removed and a big note at the top that said:

This is not from Information Technology. This is a phishing scam.
Do not click on the link, do not fill anything out. If you already did, please contact the help desk immediately.

Being the good little IT person that I am, I sent the warning to everybody in the organization.

...And immediately got a visit from the Director of IT, because apparently this was a test they were running on the IT staff and I'd just spoiled it. 

I make no apologies for this.

12 comments:

  1. No, I'd not apologiese either. You weren't to know. It could have been real.

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  2. That’s hilarious, Michael! And good for you. You had nothing to apologize for.

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    1. I mean honestly, they really should have seen it coming.

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  3. LOL..... good on you. And, yep, you are good at what you do, they should have looped you in.

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  4. Oh come on, you passed the test. LOL

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  5. Props to them for thinking up such a test! Perhaps your warning email sufficed to increase awareness of phishing scams, which would have been the point of the test.

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  6. Well, at least they know someone's paying attention!

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  7. Great eye! I work for the SSA and they test us quite often. I've reported it every time and then we earn a badge we can put on our email signature. Currently I'm a "Tiger Shark"...it's kinda fun...get it? Phishing? I'm a tiger shark...anyway...

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  8. HAHAHA! This legitimately made me laugh out loud. Thanks for that.

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Feel free to leave comments; it lets me know that people are actually reading my blog. Interesting tangents and topic drift just add flavor. Linking to your own stuff is fine, as long as it's at least loosely relevant. Be civil, and have fun!