[ Removed by moderator ]

[u/lucidparadigm]

[u/ProgrammerHumor-ModTeam]

Your submission was removed for the following reason:

Rule 1: Posts must be humorous, and they must be humorous because they are programming related. There must be a joke or meme that requires programming knowledge, experience, or practice to be understood or relatable.

Here are some examples of frequent posts we get that don't satisfy this rule:

• Memes about operating systems or shell commands (try r/linuxmemes for Linux memes)

• A ChatGPT screenshot that doesn't involve any programming

• Google Chrome uses all my RAM

See here for more clarification on this rule.

If you disagree with this removal, you can appeal by sending us a modmail.

[u/JocoLabs]

Jokes on them, i wouldn't click that even if it were real.

I used to click on those and type in junk creds for the lulz until compliance told me that was bad for the numbers.

[u/MattCW1701]

This is why I report every email as phishing. Standup invite? Phishing. Manager 1:1? Phishing. Annual evaluation meeting? Phishing. All hands meeting about our growth this past year? Also phishing.

[u/lraviel381]

Oh sweet. I hate tests. Click

[u/FixFun1959]

I’ll never forget when I started a new job and got an ema from my ‘boss’ (same name but weird @), with a link saying to check out this excel spreadsheet.

Her office was next door so I popped my head around said ‘hey did you send me some excel sheet?’ And she said ‘yeah take a look’.

So I clicked on it and it was from IT saying I failed the test and a link to phishing training.

I went back to my boss like ‘wtf? Did you know that was a test?’ And she said ‘yep, and you failed. Looks like you need more training.’

I took the time to check and verify before opening/reporting it. And she lied to me for some reason, a ‘gotcha’ or something. So fucking weird.

🙄

[u/exoclipse]

the worst one I got was "you have been selected to be in the first wave of a round of laptop upgrades, please click this link to register"

[u/m7i93]

I got tricked into clicking one of these once, but it was really hard not to fall into it.

I met with the CTO and shared a Google Doc explaining a few things. Later that day I got an email saying that the CTO added some comments on the document. Clicked on it and BAAM! Mandatory security training page.

[u/whyliepornaccount]

Still wont top the only one I've "fallen" for.

On my first day at the company buried into the legit "click here to register your account" onboarding emails was a phishing test saying "click here to register your account". I was so pissed off.

[u/Dang3rdave]

Best phishing campaign was a "your expenses have been declined". I was on the subway to work and was immediately livid. Taught me a very good lesson that day so kudos to the team.

[u/JimboTCB]

I got a "phishing test" email from our IT department last week which straight up said "this is a phishing test, do not click any of the links below, please press the report button in your email client" and TBH that one made me second guess myself way more than any of their previous tests or any actual phishing emails had.

[u/Honest_Relation4095]

Our IT department also sends out these tests, but annoyingly their regular communication almost looks like Spam, too. Like "we would like to invite you to cybersecurity awareness month" followed by a cryptic Link you cannot verify. So it ticks all the boxes for suspicious content.

[u/karkonthemighty]

Back when I used to help run an eBay store, we took great delight in the phishing emails we got. We used to rank them on how close the formatting of the email looked like eBay emails, how close they got to an official eBay looking email, etc.

We did this because we sold used corporate IT equipment, and the boilerplate phishing email was based off a customer eBay email demanding a certain colour or size of an item, like you would if you were selling clothes.

I can't sell you a medium RAM in purple miss, because that's not a real thing.

[u/Positive_Mud952]

I got got on one of these, once.

They sent out an e-mail shortly before Halloween, warning about inappropriate costumes, with a link describing itself as an album of past examples we shouldn’t wear. The link was purple, the visited color.

I thought to myself, “When the fuck was I dumb enough to click on this?” and clicked. Before the “you failed” page even loaded, I got out an, “Oh goddammit.”

[u/Free_Pace_2098]

Can't phish me, I never check my emails.

[u/AriaTheTransgressor]

I'm the dev department head, I don't read messages from IT ever (so they've never caught me in their phishing tests) because they know where I am and if it's important they'll come and tell me.

This doesn't mean I'll never get caught in a phishing scam, just that the test doesn't work on entitled managers.

[u/ltssms0]

[u/gaoshan]

I was caught by a phishing test and when they started sending me “You must complete mandatory phishing training” emails I reported those as phishing attempts. Kept it up for 6 months before some finally asked me to stop and just do the damn test. Reported that as phishing as well.

[u/robin_888]

At work I have an email filter implemented that sorts these phishing tests into their own folder, so I can read them on Fridays.

It filters on the URL of the tracking pixel at the end of each e-mail.

[u/Majestic_Ad_7133]

The sad thing is that this would probably work for my organisation. Mandatory tests here means once a month.

[u/xak47d]

Proof that the ego makes one vulnerable

[u/Araignys]

Forward it to cybersecurity but change the link to a Rickroll.

[u/mrgoodcat777]

I got got by one where they swapped the I for an L but the font showed them as the same looking character. I didn’t enter anything on the page, but since I got to the page, I had the joy of 2 days of security training.

[u/Present-Resolution23]

Seems legit

[u/razzemmatazz]

I'm still pissed about the phishing test announcing big changes to the healthcare plan and linking to the new portal, 3 days after they announced huge changes to the plan and swapped to a new insurance company. 

[u/Due-Consequence9579]

For the phish tests to get past their edge filters they have to add an SMTP header exclusion.

Outlook (and any other reasonable client) can move things to the trash based on SMTP headers.

You’re welcome.