18 April 2007

Junk Mail Gets Aggressive.

I received this in my e-mail account this morning. I suspect that it is a violent variation on the Nigerian money transfer e-mail scam, but it a little harder to blow off, despite the fact that the addressee in the header and the name in the body of the message is wrong. It says:


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From : SKIPPER MOTHER
Sent : Wednesday, April 18, 2007 9:07 AM
To : rjhusson@usa.co
Subject : TERMINATION

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Dear Half,

I hereby notify you that you will cease to exist by exactly 72 hours after the date on this notice.There is a deal brought to us to snuff life out of you, within one week.
Do not ever bother to ask WHO? because i cannot tell you now,Also do not try to alert the security agencies,because you are living at our mercy.A total surveillance has been mounted on you right now,and any fast move will land you into the land of the dead.

Now listen attentively,I have been in this profession for long,not because it is my phobia;I only find a living in it.I just want to spare your life and at the same time flee away from our syndicate of assassin.To achieve this,I need a maximum corparation from you.
reply urgently

and clues about those who are after you will follow after my escape.

do this To be alive ;otherwise you will be a ghost soon,Delay is dangerous!!!


In the original, "assassin.To" is a hyperlink to a non-existent webpage.

4 comments:

Andrew Oh-Willeke said...

FYI, this has been referred to the proper authorities and appears to be a variation on a new e-mail extortion scam that started in December of 2006.

Anonymous said...

I watched a couple episodes of Chris Hansen's identity theft report on Dateline. Three of the marks they interviewed were incredibly naive. One man spent thousands of dollars shipping packages internationally for his "fiancee," whom he only knew by email and enticing pictures. He was effectively laundering merchandise, purchased with stolen credit cards, that vendors otherwise would not have shipped out of the country. Did I mention that he's already married?

We've been lucky, so far, that the spammers are unsophisticated non-native speakers. Having seen the poor saps on Dateline, however, I just know there is some terrified, compliant recipient.

Spams are low-percentage scams, but email is cheap. Even if no one falls for the penny-stock spams, per se, the price will go up on speculation that someone will. It's like MLM and tulip mania rolled into one.

Andrew Oh-Willeke said...

I spoke to a very respectful investigator today who reviewed the e-mail and determined that it actually came from a server in Nigeria.

Unknown said...

Did you also report it to 419 Eaters?