I got an email at work this week that purported to be an invoice for Adobe Sign. I\u2019m not someone who is in charge of invoices and I don\u2019t use that software personally. It had all the hallmarks of some standard issue phishing and I was about to delete it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But, the more I looked at it, the more “suspiciously suspicious” it became. The red flags<\/span> were conspicuously red and it just seemed\u2026obvious. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It wasn\u2019t just a phishing message, I concluded. It was a test from our IT department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I right-clicked on it, chose A few minutes later, I got another email – thanking me for reporting the phishing test message. It was from the IT security group and I had passed the test.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yes.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Nailed it.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I popped open a Teams chat to a colleague in the IT security team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDo I get a prize for reporting the phishing test message?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A few minutes later he replied with an animated gif of \u201cGood Job!\u201d and a gold star.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I laughed and sent him back an LOL. Then sent,<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI was hoping for a scratch-and-sniff or a puffy sticker that I could put on my laptop, but I\u2019ll settle for a \u2018Good job, Anthony\u2019 email and the animated gif.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He sent an LOL back and said he\u2019d look into the IT sticker budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was deeply proud of myself about the whole thing – more so when I found most colleagues in my department had deleted it and even more so when I heard a couple colleagues had clicked on the link.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Amateurs<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n When I shared this with a colleague later that day and bemoaned my stickerless reward, she immediately opened up the drawer on her desk and brought out her sticker stash for me to choose one. I picked the \u201csilly goose\u201d – because I am and because it was wearing an origami hat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was quite<\/em> the clever boy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I got an email at work this week that purported to be an invoice for Adobe Sign. I\u2019m not someone who is in charge of invoices and I don\u2019t use that software personally. It had all the hallmarks of some standard issue phishing and I was about to delete it. But, the more I looked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"1","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3429"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3430,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3429\/revisions\/3430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Report Phishing<\/code> from the menu, and the message was gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n