Number 80: December 8, 2004

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This week in Katydid:

• Writing off the Hook
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Writing off the Hook
I first wrote about phishing, the practice of luring people to a fake web site to steal personal information, about a year ago. Naturally, the scammers have become more sophisticated since then. There's a new attack out now that you should know about, and I find the language remarkable.

One key tip-off for a phishing scheme is the copy. Writing (I like to think) is a skill that must be developed over time. I like to think that the programmer hacking away in his mom's basement has not devoted as much time to writing as he has to coding. Add to that the fact that many of these schemes come from outside the United States, and you have a recipe for some terrible copy.

Even if the copy is grammatically and mechanically correct, it often misses on style. In delivery, it's too direct and stiff. American copy takes a while to warm up. PC Magazine's Security Watch newsletter recently covered a phishing e-mail that uses SunTrust Bank's branding. They posted a graphic of the e-mail, so you can read the language for yourself.

Notice that there's nothing grammatically egregious here. In the second sentence of the first paragraph, they need to replace ", which" with "that". They end the last sentence of that paragraph with a preposition, but that's a style rule that few in America follow anymore. (For me, it depends on the application.) In the second paragraph, they write "new important", which sounds a little off; most would say "important new". Minor stuff.

The e-mail is impressive with how well they mimic American corporate style. This sounds exactly as if it were written by customer service, and then run through marketing and legal. It takes two entire paragraphs to get to the point. Since the writer knows that the fake site will not have the full functionality of the real site, they anticipate the readers' concerns by mentioning that some features will not work.

The whole piece is comforting in its formality and banality. It's a good con because it doesn't sound desperate and it isn't too perfect. I would expect that the writer of this copy has spent some time in corporate America. They probably studied many of these customer service messages and are good enough writers to cut and paste without wrecking the style.

With any luck, there will be an ironic ending to this story, because phishing ploys are intended to collect enough personal information to steal your identity. The evidence to catch and convict this writer may be found in the identifying personal style in which he or she writes. That would literally be poetic justice.

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Kind regards, 
Kevin Troy Darling

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