Interesting Spam – Airline Ticket

Posted: April 3, 2012 | Categories: Miscellaneous

I just received yet another interesting spam message in my inbox. Well actually it wasn't in my inbox; Outlook recognized it as spam and quarantined it – I'm surprised Norton Antivirus didn't catch this one (because of the likely infected attachment).

Anyways, here's a screen shot of the email.

What I imagine happens is someone gets this email and goes “Crikey, I didn't buy any plane ticket” and opens the attachment to see who purchased a ticket. Of course they open the 'ticket' and get infected. It must work since I've received many of these over time.

I don't get it, how do people actually fall for this. Have any of you ever received an email attachment with an airline ticket from an airline? No, tickets come to your inbox – as an email message, not an attachment after you've checked in. No airline that I can think of has ever sent tickets in advance of checking in – even if they did, they wouldn't zip it. They'd send it as a PDF file (which is already compressed).

You'll notice that the itinerary information doesn't list the name of the departure city – that alone would tell me that it's a scam – where you're leaving from is as important as where you're going to. Right?

Of course, Outlook hides the message routing information from me, so I can't look to see where the email actually came from. In this case, the email address shown as the from email is correct – it would go to Delta Airlines if you replied. However, it wouldn't actually get to anyone since all the spammer wants you to do is open the attachment; if you don't do that, he doesn't care what else you do.

Of course, this email was written by someone who doesn't speak English as a primary language:

Your bought ticket is attached to the letter as a scan document.

You can print your ticket.

Thank you for using our airline company services.

What was it that PT Barnum said?

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