FBI: Ignore e-mail death threats!

Recipients of e-mail messages threatening death at the hands of a hit man unless they pay 20,000 dollars can sleep more easily. The threat is a hoax, the FBI said, reiterating warnings issued in January 2007 and December 2006 because threatening messages continue to circulate. The FBI said it had received about 115 complaints about the threatening e-mail through its Internet Crime Complaint Center since the scam emerged.

While jaded internet veterans might scoff that anyone would take such a threat seriously, the scheme appears more credible than it might otherwise because of its use of personal information to make the message more intimidating. In one case, the FBI said, a recipient of the death threat responded to the sender asking to be left alone and received a reiteration of the threat that included his work address, his marital status, and his daughter's name. But, as the police said, that personal information is widely available.

Worried recipients may also be comforted by the fact that poor grammar is common in the variants of this message, which suggests the self-proclaimed hit man may reside in a foreign country.

(Source: InformationWeek)