Every so often, I'll get a forward from some friend or family member (usually not one who started using the Internet in college or grad school, as I did), warning us of some scam, some crime, some upcoming law, or some such. 99+% of the time, this is some sort of hoax. A quick search of the web will reveal that it's a reasonably well-known hoax; I'll respond to the whole list letting everybody know about this.
One of the best places for this sort of thing is snopes.com. Indeed, I received an E-mail this evening that was, on the face of it, fairly alarming. Fortunately, a quick visit to snopes.com confirmed what I suspected: it's just more spam, if perhaps slightly more noxious than regular spam. (I miss the guy from Nigeria trying to launder money. At least he wasn't going to kill me.)
Before I show you the text of the letter, I want to link to the relevant snopes.com article, just so nobody gets alarmed.
Having done that, here is the text of the letter:
Hello,
I wish to let you know that i have been paid by a client to assasinate you at convenience,and i have signed a contract of $650,000 yesterday for this.I have never met you before,but they gave me the full description of your identity and contact,together with your photograph which my boys have used to trace you.
The reason why they want you Dead is not disclosed to me as i was not allowed to know,but you are now not better that the dead ok.
My BOYS are now contantly watching you,they are following you-home,office,everywhere.....,you go and they are waiting for my instruction to terminate you.And they will strike at convenience.
THIS IS MY MESSAGE-
LISTEN VERY WELL !!!!,the Police cannot do much to help you out in this right now because you are being watched,any such attempt is very risky cause you will push us to terminate your life without option. Your calls are not safe also.In fact you are traced.
I have no business with you but at least i have cleared the way as a pro-,but you may have one chance to live again if you can contact me not latter that 24 hours after this mssage.email makerby@yahoo.com
GOODLUCK!!!
The only question that remains is if I should just discard this, as snopes.com recommends, or if there is any point in reporting it to some sort of law enforcement agency. After all, this is extortion via death threat, which is rather a crime. The thing is, almost certainly the yahoo email addresses are junk addresses that won't easily be traceable, so there's probably no point.
All part of the fun of living in the modern world.
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You'd think an assassin would have better grammar.
You'd think more people would appreciate Snopes. I keep recommending it to family members who are suckers for fake e-mail scams (but it doesn't do as much good as it should). One friend, however, wrote me to share the reaction of someone who really disliked Snopes, saying "Some myths are true!" No help for people like that, I'm afraid.
Heh. Clearly you haven't been keeping up with xkcd ...
On the one hand, Snopes is great as an antidote to internet crap. On the other hand, when I send a gullible person to Snopes, there is the risk that they will click on the adware popup that comes up every time. It's like they're drumming up their own business. The two proprietors must know that gullible people are likely to fall victim.
But yeah, I'd ignore that letter for sure. Or maybe print it out and put it on my office door with spelling corrections marked in red.
Post the headers that came with the email, please.
You know, if someone is going to ask me to fork over more than $650,000 (and that's a giveaway right there - I don't actually know anybody who has that kind of money), just once using my name in the email would go a long way to convincing me that they knew who I was. Of course, if they knew who I was they'd know *I* don't have that kind of money either...
You may want to see this before consulting snopes.com. ;-)
I have a friend who is constantly sending me this kind of crap. No matter how many times I tell her to check Snopes before forwarding them, she continues to forward the emails. Whenever I receive anything suspicious, I check snopes then reply to everyone with the link to Snopes.
The last one I received was if you are being forced to input your PIN at an ATM, put it in backwards and the bank will know you are being robbed and call 911. When I replied to this that this is not true, my friend responded, "I know." She had called her bank to ask if this was true but hadn't bothered to let anyone else know that this was not true. Needless to say, I had a rude response for her.
I have a friend who loves to send these kinds of forwards, and it was driving me crazy, so I started responding with links to Snopes and the recommendation that she check the site before forwarding emails.
So . . . . now she emails me to ask if I will check Snopes for her.
What time to meet for coffee Weds.?