ptalk > July 2000

An eye for an ell

How well does your email font distinguish ‘l’ (ell) and ‘I’ (eye)?

Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2000 15:23:18 GMT
  From: rubin@research.att.com (Avi Rubin)
  Subject: Fake Paypal site collects user ids and passwords
  
  Somebody in the Ukraine registered PayPaI.com (note the
  resemblance to PayPal, especially with the upper-case I
  [in some fonts]), then copied Paypal's HTML and sent
  mail to a bunch of paypal users saying 'J. Random has
  just transferred $827 to you using PayPal, log in at
  http://www.paypaI.com/ to claim it!'  of course, as soon
  as you "logged in" your password was mailed to some free
  e-mail service. For more on the story see
  <http://www.msnbc.com/news/435937.asp?cp1=1> among other
  places.
  
  Avi  http://avirubin.com/
  

[From Risks Digest]