Spyware, viruses, & security : Phishing scams - companies aren't helping

Phishing scams - companies aren't helping

I just took the MailFrontier Phishing IQ Test, which is a great tool for educating people on what to look out for. I scored 80%. The two I got wrong were ones I thought were scams, but were in fact legit. First, it doesn't bother me much that I got those wrong, since I was erring on the side of caution. However, the reasons I was wary of those messages is what concerns me about the practices of these companies.

The two test emails I mistakenly flagged as phishing scams had bogus-looking URLs: Bank of America used the domain "bankofamerica1.com", and the CapitalOne message had a link to the domain "bfi0.com". The test answers even pointed out that thest were suspicious looking.

What concerns me is that if companies continue to use such odd-looking domains to conduct legitimate business, people will get used to seeing them, so they won't raise the red flags that the should. I'm sure the phishers love this, since these companies are conditioning people to fall for their scams.

I understand that companies need to load-balance their servers, or track the responses to various messages. However, there are many other ways to do that without creating new domains.