E-Mails Threatening to Kill are Fake, Warns Police

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According to New Zealand police, an e-mail, which scares its recipient of getting him killed, is totally fraudulent.

Details revealed so far suggest that a reader of Otago Daily Times notified the daily on May 5, 2010 via forwarding the e-mail, while expressing apprehensions that recipients of the same might take the message seriously.

Noted Dunedin Police (Dunedin, NZ) there hadn't been any earlier report of the uninvited e-mail the particular reader had forwarded. The e-mail, which initially says that someone hired its sender for murdering the recipient, thereafter states that if the killer was paid US$6,000 (NZ$ 8,300), he wouldn't execute the killing plan.

In addition to this, Australia's Tasmanian Police too reported on May 3, 2010 that the same electronic mail was circulating in their area and that it was another fake e-mail.

NZ Police showed nil astonishment about the e-mail hitting the country's servers when the message had been already making rounds in Australia.

Meanwhile, police in Tasmania cautions that anyone getting an uninvited e-mail can best treat it by deleting it rather than opening, it since a few of them may carry malware that could infect computers, as per the news published by examiner.com.au on May 3, 2010.

Furthermore, Tasmania Police outlines that the latest death threat e-mail purports to be a message sent from either crosskiller@live.com or cross@killer.com. Also, the e-mail's header in both the cases is "You Have 72 Hours (sic) To Respond To This Mail Or Forget It."

However, to conduct necessary investigations for tracing the threat e-mail's real source, police has suggested the e-mail's recipients to get in touch with them.

Finally, users can protect themselves from being conned with e-mails similar to the one mentioned above by acquiring more knowledge regarding the ways in which junk or unsolicited e-mails should be handled.

Police has also recommended Australian Communication and Media Authority's Internet site, www.acma.gov.au to increase its knowledge of scam e-mails. Besides, the Authority has advised to visit ScamWatch, a website which gives additional details regarding online scams as well as measures to counter them.