After years of carefully and meticulously educating the public NOT to click on every wild and crazy link that appears in your email inbox, particularly if it comes from someone claiming to be your bank, occasionally someone REALLY screws up and sends you something like this:

This email came to my Gmail account over lunch today. Not my spambox. My inbox. So… I read it.

I DID NOT click on the link. I looked into it a lot deeper. Did a bunch of Google searches, some whois queries on the domains, scanned the source for any tricks and did some very careful prodding. And for all intents and purpose, after researching the firm, the sending business, the survey, the hosting company, and the actual dude who wrote and signed the email (who has a LinkedIn account and seems completely legit and doing the job he claims to be doing) this appears to be a REAL INVITATION from a REAL RESEARCH COMPANY on behalf of my BANK — you know, the people looking after my money — to do a survey. I didn’t pare it down. I didn’t skim out images or signatures (there were none.) I didn’t do anything besides read, scoff, and grab a screenshot. As far as I can tell this is not phishing. This is — sadly — real.

If you don’t get what’s wrong with this, I have a friend in Nigeria you should speak with.

If dude, company, or bank ever see this: yes, you screwed up. And yes, I’m not happy. And dude, I’m sorry if you lose your job because of this or something similar, but you should not be allowed near the Internet. No, really. Close the laptop lid now, and back slowly away from your desk.