[FALSE ALARM] Phishing attempt Email sent to forum visitors!

I just received a phishing attempt in the form of a newsletter. It boasts 50% off GSB and whatnot!

It pretends to be from Cliff Harris.

Here is the email. Thankfully the REAL phishing site doesn’t come over when I paste it but the faked links do.

—8<—

[code]
Have you conquered the galaxy yet? If not, you might want to take the opportunity to assert your rightful place on the galactic throne, by playing the latest add-on for Gratuitous Space Battles: Galactic conquest.
GSB:GC is now available on steam, so if you prefer to get it from steam head over to here:

and grab your copy without delay. of course, you can always do the equivalent of supporting your local store by buying from my humble web site here instead:
http://www.positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/galacticconquest.html

And also if you have mac-gaming friends who still haven’t tried GSB, let them know the game is now available on the apple appstore too.

Is conquest of the galaxy thinking a bit too big for you? how about a single country instead? If so, you are in luck, because to celebrate Presidents Day in the USA, Democracy 2 is currently 50% off if you buy direct and use this code:
PRESIDENTS

Just enter the code on the order form at our buy page here:
https://secure.bmtmicro.com/servlets/Orders.ShoppingCart?CID=2899&PRODUCTID=28990005
(Sorry that’s for PC only). Don’t delay, the code will expire in 48 hours.

Not convinced you should be buying Democracy 2? in need of some worthy academic study to prove the game is worth buying? No problem. Let me quote from the research paper “Effectiveness of the Computer game Democracy 2 as an educational medium for Teaching Development Issues” :

“Democracy 2 enabled the students who played it to engage in what is called higher-order learning (according to Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning Objectives), enabling them to analyze and evaluate the issues and concepts regarding development and create strategies (at least in the game) for dealing with the negative issues”

See… it’s not just a fun game, it actually makes you smarter. Sort of. You don’t get people saying that about quake, anyway.

Looking for some pretty pictures of spaceships while your new games download? Feel free to vote in the GSB community spaceship mod poll here:
http://positech.co.uk/forums/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=5906
Personally I love the black one (design #17)
Cheers,

Cliffski[/code]

I just received that myself. The links are most definitely not legit. Cliff, I think someone may have got hold of your email address list (or you’re sending very suspicious emails).

WTF, same here…

Hm? Those links seem pretty legit to me, the BMT micro one is exactly the game as the one you get when trying to buy Democracy2 from cliff.
Could you explain what is wrong exactly in that mail?

The links pasted there aren’t the links in the email. The text of the links is those, but the links themselves lead to a completely different place. It’s a very common technique for spammers as people believe what they read and don’t bother to check where the link really leads to. The worry here is that 1) someone has Cliff’s mailing list, and 2) someone might click on those links.

Cliff, if this is actually legit and your newsletter uses a service to redirect the links then I strongly advise you to reconsider using that service. No one who knows what they’re doing will click on those, and many email services will automatically mark the email as spam.

It’s legit. All the newsletters from cliff I have so far don’t show me the proper URL when hovering any of the links

I checked all the links so people don’t have to worry. All of them point to the indicated sites. The buy page is the one for the true Democracy 2 game.

In which case I’ll point Cliff to my second paragraph:

“Cliff, if this is actually legit and your newsletter uses a service to redirect the links then I strongly advise you to reconsider using that service. No one who knows what they’re doing will click on those, and many email services will automatically mark the email as spam.”

It’s not a great idea to look like a fake email. Also, I’ve just realised what else worried me - the embedded invisible images. Another common spamming technique.

hmm…

i personally am not subscribed to the newsletter

but I do love checking (and laughing at) phishing attempts

does anyone care to post (or PM me) the fake links?

thx

gunny

Apparently they’re real links, but just look fake. Example: t.ymlp161.net/ubjapamyyadauuwearamejus/click.php

Damn, forgot to come and post in this thread till now.
It’s not phishing, it’ the newsletter, it’s just the redirect that the newsletter company uses to track if anyone clicks the links. Don’t panic. All the newsletters have always had those links.