My VISA account has been suspended
Information Regarding Your account:
Dear VISA Member! Attention!
Your VISA Credit Card has been violated!
Someone from Bulgaria tried to access your personal account from 2 different ATM’s but with wrong pin! We were forced to freeze your Credit Card until you will confirm your identity online!
Please click the link below and enter your account information to confirm that you are not currently away. You have 3 days to confirm account information or your account will be locked.
https://www.usa1.visa.com/verifiedbyvisa/usa1/update.asp
Click on the “Confirm identity ” link in the Activate Credit Card box and then enter this confirmation number: 1291-3821-1345-9233-3925
Thank you for using Visa!
Verified by Visa Team
Please do not reply to this e-mail. Mail sent to this address cannot be answered.
VISA Email ID VU294E22
I had almost deleted the above e-mail and dismissed it as a phishing attempt when something caught my eye. Something that spoke to me. Something that said this isn’t the work of some 15-year old in a basement but the is the genuine article — an item put out by an overworked and overstressed Visa customer service department.
It wasn’t the lack of Visa graphics. Everybody knows that phishers can easily insert those to make an e-mail look more legit. Phishers are that hip. That cool.
It wasn’t the reference to Bulgaria. As it happens, I summer there and make use of many of the 22,000 ATMs located throughout Albena, Sofia, Varna and Plevin. Of course, I always use the correct PIN.
No. It was neither of those things.
When you, I anyway, receive an e-mail that is obviously phishing it has an almost Barry White feel to it. It has a very smooth, sexy delivery. I get just a little turned on. I know when it comes to that phisher I’m his first, his last, his everything.
The item I received today that I’ve so cleverly put in a colored box at the top of this entry had nothing at all like a Barry-White delivery.
It was more Gilbert Godfried.
Your Visa card has
been stolen you
sonuvabitch!
Dear Visa Member !
Attention !
Your VISA Credit Card has been violated! Someone from Bulgaria tried to access your personal account from 2 different ATM’s but with wrong pin! We were forced to freeze your Credit Card until you will confirm your identity online!
Nothing says that this is an honest-to-goodness warning from a credit card company like the use of exclamation points. These people — the Visa folks — want to get my attention. They want me to know they care. They want me to know that they appreciate my business so much that they close with:
Thank you for using Visa!
Because saying, Thank you for using Visa you crazy sonuvabitch, we love you is not very business like.
