Phishing in Irish

Well, this is a surprise. One of my .ie email addresses got a very targeted phishing email. It was so specific that it was actually written in Irish! It wasn’t directed at me, but at a list owner address at linux.ie.
I wonder if the spammers know how many Irish people could actually read their email easily? It’d certainly be easier for most people to read in English.

Aire

Tá mé an tUasal Patrick KW Chan an Stiúrthóir Feidhmiúcháin agus Príomh-Oifigeach airgeadais Hang Seng Bank Ltd, Hong Cong.
Tá mé togra gnó brabúsaí leasa choitinn a roinnt le leat;
Baineann sé leis an aistriú suim mhór airgid.
Fuair mé do tagairt i mo cuardach a dhéanamh ar dhuine a oireann mo chaidreamh gnó molta.
Má tá suim agat i obair liom teagmháil a dhéanamh liom mo trí r-phost príobháideach (mrpatkwchan52@yahoo.com.hk) le haghaidh tuilleadh sonraí

Dearbhófar do fhreagra túisce chun an litir seo a mhór.

An tUasal Patrick Chan
E-mail: mrpatkwchan52@yahoo.com.hk

I suppose it was bound to happen now that Google translates text into Irish. Well done to Gmail for marking it as spam!

6 thoughts on “Phishing in Irish

  1. For the lazy (like me):

    Regard

    I am Mr. Patrick KW Chan Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer Hang Seng Bank Ltd, Hong Kong.
    I have a business proposal brabúsaí common interest to share with you;
    It concerns the transfer of a large sum of money.
    I found your reference in my search for someone who suits my proposed business relationship.
    If you are interested in working to contact me through my private email (mrpatkwchan52@yahoo.com.hk) for further details

    Your response to the letter earlier this big.

    Mr Patrick Chan
    E-mail: mrpatkwchan52@yahoo.com.hk

  2. I would surmise that some phisher has a table of CCTLD-to-language mappings and is pasting their text into Google Translate before spamming their .ie address list. If only they knew how few people can read it!

    Any gaeilgoirs care to indicate how poorly that text parses?

  3. I got this as well at my primary e-mail, so it doesn’t seem to be limited to just .ie’s. Although it was sent in a bad encoding so all the accented letters turned into mangled garbage.

    Was quite funny to see the spammers trying to “connect” with their targets in a way!

  4. @Donncha: ahh I was going to ask how well its grammar was. I didn’t know some of the nouns. wish i did better reading it though 🙁 Heres top hopefully going to the Gaeltacht this summer 😛

    btw its wonder why they didnt use a .ie email themselves?

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