Proof reading phishing attacks
FTA: "What worries me is that one day it will occur to an online criminal that it might be worth hiring a proofreader. This small act would likely bring about the end of all civilisation as we know it."
Actually, no - there was an excellent Microsoft paper about this:
The initial email blitz has almost no cost to the scammer, but subsequent follow-up emails to people who bite take considerable time. Anyone responding to the first email, but subsequently smelling a rat, is therefore costly to the scammer.
The scammer therefore does not want to be convincing enough to initially fool moderately smart people who will drop out after any genuine investment of time has occurred - they want to catch the truly naïve or foolish.
The rubbish emails we get are done deliberately to filter out 99.99% of people, but with 500,000,000 to choose from, that still leaves 50,000 rich pickings who, though this approach, identify themselves to the scammers.