does crack me up when people fall for it.

Big companies never send out emails to people. Unless you are rich with your own personal advisor at a bank you will never receive a text or email from them. and by rich I don't mean a measly million or 2 in the bank, you would be looking at at least 9 digits.

It is like the Nigeria scam, people fall for it cause they are greedy.

Nonsense - my bank emails me all the time. Granted the spelling or the grammar is not very good, and the links that I try to use inside the mail usually do not work but at least they are trying, yes? I'm just happy that they are so concerned about my security, and that they keep updating it all the time.

Can't be too careful, you know...

Err what are you talking about mate, how is it "greedy" to respond to what appears to be an email from your bank requesting confirmation of login details? Granted only a fuckwit would get caught out but that's not greed, perhaps you don't really understand the term "phishing" please see any good search engine for the answer.

Amazon, ebay, and just about anywhere you buy anything from will send marketing mails to you if you choose.

email marketing is huge and banks do it all the time - if you opt in.

They managed to make fake bank cards? I'm presuming that they didn't manage to generate the magstripe/chip, just a bit of plastic that looked like the card (with the raised numbers) even the holograms seem unlikely...

Very few places are using chips yet. The mag stripe thing is easy to write (you can buy mag strip writers quite easily).

You don't need pretty pictures and holograms to fool an ATM.

...a tax on the stupid, payable to the resourceful.