One should be used to scam mails by now. Be it the Nigerian prince or sextortion – the steady amount of mails that want to trick you out of your money is something one can rely on. But what if you’d suddenly get one that tells you that there was a bomb in your building? Would you freak out? Call the authorities? Pay up? No matter what, chances are that that’s something that could actually happen to you – but do not worry, the bomb is a lie.
Scammers want 20,000 to not detonate the bomb
Just imagine you open your mail and suddenly you see a rather strange once in your inbox. It tells you that someone – a mercenary hired by the sender – has placed a bomb in your building. The bomb is made of “tronitrotoluene” which probably should be trinitrotoluene (TNT) and will be set off if the receiver of the mail does not pay 20 000$ in Bitcoins. The good thing: the threat is of course not real. There is no bomb, there is no mercenary, and of course nothing will ever explode.
According to BleepingComputer and a security researcher named Defender around 15,000 people have received this or a similar mail. Recipients are in Canada, the UK, NL, Switzerland, and Sweden. While most people probably know that this is just another scam mail like the sextortion one, the threat in it makes the stakes a lot higher. After all no one would want to risk the life of their colleagues, friends, or family.
Please be advised – there is an email being circulated containing a bomb threat asking for bitcoin payment. While this email has been sent to numerous locations, searches have been conducted and NO DEVICES have been found. pic.twitter.com/7omOs13Z7Q
— NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) 13. Dezember 2018
Call the authorities
Even though you know that the mail is a fake you should make sure to call the authorities nonetheless. A threat is a threat and it’s always better to be safe than sorry.
