It's interesting to me to learn about novel targets for phishing attacks, and it's probably even educational for book authors and other trusting folks to learn that they can be targeted this way.

The answer to your second question of course depends on your own idea of what constitutes "bad news"; but I think it's not hard to imagine why some people might not consider it a good thing when folks are getting duped into revealing information outside its intended audience.

It's curious that I can't resist writing this when you likely already knew and ignored it when you wrote your comment.