Monday, December 18, 2006

What not to say in a bank "spoof e-mail"

Recently, I received one of those spoof mails -- the ones which give a web link and advise you to go directly there to correct your account -- saying my bank account was in danger of having "been accessed by an unauthorized third party." This, to me, was exciting, because I don't have an account with any bank, right now. As far as the monetary world goes, I'm a non-person.

And, yet, this agency sought me out to "correct" my account.

But wait -- it gets better.

The warning at the bottom of the message informed me that I need to
update your records on or before 48 hours, a failure to update your records will result in a temporal hold on your funds.

Needless to say, I was concerned. Not only were they messing with grammar, by making a run-on sentence out of two complete sentences and not joining them with, for example, a semicolon or a dash, but they threaten a "temporal [earthly] hold" on my (nonphysical, ergo clearly only spiritual) funds. With my ethereal wherewithal grounded, I fear I shall suffer a lack of whimsy, a lack of felicity, a lack of joy in my Noël.

Or, perhaps they simply meant there might be an ephemeral lock. No worries, then. My fancy can pick those, any day.

Oh, yes. They also said, "Tank you for your patience". I don't think there's any need for them to have gotten rude. Whether they intend to force me into a large container or run me over with a piece of military machinery, that's no way to talk to a prospective patsy.

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