Got a “phishing” email the other day at work. Because I know how to spell English words, I was protected against this nefarious scheme.

For those of you who don’t know, “phishing” is when a thief contacts you and attempts to bamboozle you into giving them your PINs, passwords, social security numbers, etc., so that the thief can pretend to be you and steal all your money. It’s called “phishing” because it only works if someone takes the bait. If the thief sends out a million emails, they might get a bite. (The real clue to avoiding falling prey to phishing by email or phone, by the way, is to remember that if you didn’t initiate the contact, they need to identify themselves to you, not the other way around.)

In this case, I got an email pretending to be from PayPal, declaring, as usual, that I needed to enter my personal info or else my account would be suspended for security reasons. The email was an otherwise good forgery, but after the usual hypnotizing pomp and circumstance, had the following fatal phrase:

If you choose to ignore our request, you leave us no choise but to temporaly suspend your account.

Naturally this left me no reekourse but to imideatly deleete the frodulent email.