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SendGrid isn’t emailing about ICE or BLM – it’s a phishing attack

fredbenenson.com

21–30 of 152 posts

Re: SendGrid isn’t emailing about ICE or BLM – it’s a phishing attack

#21
post #3

Before anyone launches themselves into the sky: the title is clickbait. This is about phishing attempts that use ICE to persuade you to click. Sendgrid the company is not emailing about supporting ICE. But technically Sendgrid the infrastructure is.

I seriously hope HN discourse has the bare minimum of “open the link and read it before commenting”.

Re: SendGrid isn’t emailing about ICE or BLM – it’s a phishing attack

#22
"The fundamental issue is that SendGrid’s business model depends on making it easy for legitimate businesses to send email at scale."

I disagree with this conclusion, if not only because other email service providers don't have this issue.

It wouldn't surprise me if something was broken with SendGrid's internal infrastructure. I used to be a SendGrid customer until my deliverability started being affected by this issue. SendGrid took weeks to reply to my customer service messages about resolving this, even though I was a paying customer and was renting private IP addresses from them to send mail.

I finally gave up and closed my SendGrid account in July 2021. Despite this, they continued to send me monthly invoices until May 2022. Multiple SendGrid representatives promised that they had resolved the issue, but it wasn't until one CSR added me to SendGrid's global suppression list that they finally stopped.

Re: SendGrid isn’t emailing about ICE or BLM – it’s a phishing attack

#23

relatedly, my wife received polititexts destined to her conservative father. The latest was actually genius IMO, in that it stated "Dear STEVEN, due to inactivity, your registration will be changed to DEMOCRAT in 20 minutes unless you navigate to this link." It, I assume, redirected to some support page to donate to the US conservative party or its affiliates. The social engineering is getting more effective

Inevitably some people are going to be away from their phones when they receive that, so I wonder what they think when they continue getting needy messages from Republicans after that!

Re: SendGrid isn’t emailing about ICE or BLM – it’s a phishing attack

#24
post #3

Before anyone launches themselves into the sky: the title is clickbait. This is about phishing attempts that use ICE to persuade you to click. Sendgrid the company is not emailing about supporting ICE. But technically Sendgrid the infrastructure is.

I think HN should embrace AI to the point of having an alternative AI-generated title next to the original title, to reduce clickbait and reduce the global rage index.

I've been thinking about building a browser extension that turns clickbait headlines into factual titles.

"Why is SendGrid emailing me about supporting ICE?" becomes "Phishing Campaign Targets SendGrid Users via Compromised Accounts and Politically Charged Bait"

I think it would be more time than I'd like to commit though.

Re: SendGrid isn’t emailing about ICE or BLM – it’s a phishing attack

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Blocking scammers is not censorship.

> I’m not reading it, but ... [strong opinion unrelated to the actual content of the article they chose not to read]

This statement is so strongly emblematic of today's political discourse.

Re: SendGrid isn’t emailing about ICE or BLM – it’s a phishing attack

#26
post #3

Before anyone launches themselves into the sky: the title is clickbait. This is about phishing attempts that use ICE to persuade you to click. Sendgrid the company is not emailing about supporting ICE. But technically Sendgrid the infrastructure is.

I seriously hope HN discourse has the bare minimum of “open the link and read it before commenting”.

I have some bad news for you...

Re: SendGrid isn’t emailing about ICE or BLM – it’s a phishing attack

#27
post #3

Before anyone launches themselves into the sky: the title is clickbait. This is about phishing attempts that use ICE to persuade you to click. Sendgrid the company is not emailing about supporting ICE. But technically Sendgrid the infrastructure is.

I think HN should embrace AI to the point of having an alternative AI-generated title next to the original title, to reduce clickbait and reduce the global rage index.

I don't like LLMs much, though I also don't really care much either, and I don't trust any models to get the content nuance right. But I'd still welcome it if it helps a little between the tons of clickbait or just straight up incorrect or sensationalist titles.

Re: SendGrid isn’t emailing about ICE or BLM – it’s a phishing attack

#28
post #3

Before anyone launches themselves into the sky: the title is clickbait. This is about phishing attempts that use ICE to persuade you to click. Sendgrid the company is not emailing about supporting ICE. But technically Sendgrid the infrastructure is.

So a completely irresponsible headline. Is the writer confused or do we think they were aware of this distinction?

Re: SendGrid isn’t emailing about ICE or BLM – it’s a phishing attack

#30

relatedly, my wife received polititexts destined to her conservative father. The latest was actually genius IMO, in that it stated "Dear STEVEN, due to inactivity, your registration will be changed to DEMOCRAT in 20 minutes unless you navigate to this link." It, I assume, redirected to some support page to donate to the US conservative party or its affiliates. The social engineering is getting more effective

I don't know if the fact that it fully slipped into the absurd or the fact that it probably still worked on people is sadder.

I do love the idea of voter registration oscillating back and fourth at 20 minutes intervals forever. Would make voting in the primaries way more exciting as the voter base kept flipping.

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