Tech & Biz

Hitman: Sniper Spam

by Jordan Yerman | August 29, 2008 at 06:53 am

170 views | 2 Recommendations | 2 comments

So if you get an email from a purported assassin threatening to ice you (or a loved one), rest assured that it's not Agent 47, but a garden-variety spammer.

"The online Hitman scammer, who threatens to kill recipients if they do not pay thousands of dollars to the sender, is still sending out thousands of emails and the FBI is again today warning users to ignore the spam and report any incidents to the Internet Crime Complaint Center.

The scam e-mail, which first appeared in December 2006, purports to be a hired assassin, but is in reality a mass spamming looking to grab your personal information. Replying to the e-mails just sends a signal to senders that they've reached a live account. It also escalates the intimidation, the FBI said in a report last year.

Apparently people have been falling for this, not considering that a hitman probably wouldn't communicate with his target via anything but bullets.

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lgal3824

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 20:03 on August 30th, 2008

jordan, I like this story. It's good stuff, and also scary! I am sure there will be quite a few people, possibly the elderly, who will believe it. Thanks for the warning.