Digiculture

You may have seen reports warning about phishing scam emails purporting to be from the Irish Revenue Commisioners. This morning I got an message in Irish, and reasonably sophisticated Irish at that, in a text file, attached to an email which claimed to be from Cáin agus Custaim na hÉireann . The subject line is oddly phrased – “Tá sonraí le haghaidh idirbheart: 4507874176″ but the Irish in the attachment would easily pass for somewhat clunky civil-service-ese.

A chara Iarratasoir:

Tar eis an riomh do ghniomhaiocht fioscach do 2010 ta muid cinnte go bhfuil tu i dteideal a fhail meid aisioc canach de EURO 284.00.

D’fhonn an fhoirm a chomhlanu cliceail ar an nasc thios:

http://www.revenue.ie.form2011.com/form_revenue_2011.htm?id=294192481204012

Le meas,
Cain agus Custaim na hEireann

OK – so here’s how to spot phishing. The URL above looks OK? The first part – http://www.revenue.ie – that’s the address of the Revenue, isn’t it? Yes – if that ‘.ie‘ were followed immediately by a a ‘/‘. But it’s not. The actual hostname of the URL is http://www.revenue.ie.form2011.com/ which is NOT owned by the Revenue.

The rules apply as always: NEVER click on a link you get in an email like this. If you use online services for tax, banking etc then always access those sites by typing in the URL or using a bookmark you saved previously. And treat unsolicited email with suspicion.

The truly upsetting thing here however is the apparent sophistication of the Irish used. It seems too good to be machine-generated, which seems to imply an appalling conclusion. Is it possible that an Irish speaker would stoop so low as to use the language to bait such a vile hook for his fellow Gaeilgeoir?

It would be interesting to discover how many of these emails have been received by people like myself who are known for being interested in the Irish language?