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Phishing takes a nasty twist |
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Written by Tony Phelps
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Thursday, 17 November 2005 |
It seems that there is a change occurring in those responsible for the
multitudes of emails offering a large percentage of millions of dollars
if you’ll only help move it out of a defunct bank account. Now it’s
your money or your life!
Where it used to be a sad-story email describing how a heap of money is
languishing unused and unwanted, now the same people have moved on to a
blunter message which could quite easily cause distress and anxiety.
The title of such an email says it all – “we wont hesitate to kill you
and your family, so respond asap”. It then goes on to claim it has been
sent by a subsidiary of INTERNATIONAL ASSASINATORS AND WORLD SECURITY
ORGANISATIONS, and if you don’t pay US$40,000 within 90 hours, you will
be terminated by a group of 3 snipers already in your area.
One of the benefits of a smaller community and a more remote one too is
that the presence of 3 trained killers each with a sniper’s rifle would
be hard to conceal. At least you’d hope so, and it does seem everywhere
you go in Vanuatu you meet people you know so you’d think they would be
spotted. However, it’s an unpleasant email to receive and it is natural
human reaction to be concerned, particularly where loved ones are
involved.
Such emails are best dealt with in just the same way as all the other
phishing emails – just delete them. If you reply, even rudely, all you
do is confirm to the sender that there is a real email address that
they can send more rubbish to. Hit the delete button, or better yet,
mark it as junk mail so that any more are automatically deleted.
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