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March 29, 2009

When I was in elementary school, one homework project was to create color drawings of the planets of the Solar System. Believe it or not, I was no more talented as an artist when I was in 4th grade as I am now. I couldn't draw a circle with a compass back then, just as I can't now electronically draw a straight line with the constrain key down.

My very artistically-enhanced older brother took pity on my poor excuses for drawings and pitched in to help with some of the toughies, like Jupiter and Saturn. His drawings were magnificent, and it would have been painfully clear to a chimp that as you flipped through the planets, the quality of the drawings was, um, inconsistent. My teacher was certainly not fooled, and my grade for the project was adjusted accordingly.

What brings that childhood memory to mind is a PayPal phishing message I just saw. The message body clearly came from a phishing kit. The language of the body is accomplished and there are no spelling mistakes. But the sender had to fill in a couple of pieces of data in the email message, notably the From: and Subject: fields. This is where his crayons went askew, as the English language does not seem to be his forte:

From: PayPal <supports@paypal.net>

Subject: Need PayPal Accaunt Information

Oh, dear. C-minus.