First published: 28th February 2009
Hong Kong based security commentator Richard Stagg asks why phishing gangs are so dumb. One possible reason for the convincing website, but stupid emails is that the "gangs" are very loosely knit, joined only by the money trail. In this scenario, the webmasters outsource the promotion to spammers on a "pay per download" basis. Spammers that are better at drafting and delivering their message will get a better catch, and the ones that mess up the message and repeat-deliver will get laughed at by commentators. Either way, the webmasters still gut the catch.
P. T. Barnum's famous misquote, "there's a sucker born every minute", isn't limited to honest suckers.