[:en]<\/p>\n
There is no need to panic or be in anyway concerned for your personal safety about the latest batch of \u201cphishing\u201d emails that are going out with \u201cdeath threats\u201d or extortion regarding your \u201calleged\u201d online activity around pornography sites etc.<\/p>\n
A simple Google search using the following term \u201cI Was Paid To Kill You scam\u201d gave me 43 million results, all of the first 100 or so pages reporting this mail as a scam. A further search, narrowing the results down to only South Africa and only from last week, resulted in a little over 100\u00a0000 results, all of which were reporting as a hoax.<\/p>\n
A similar scam first surfaced in the USA in 2006. An email from a would-be assassin was sent to a number of users from a Russian e-mail address. The \u201cassassin\u201d apparently appointed by a close acquaintance of his target, offers the victim the opportunity to buy him or herself a new lease on life by paying between $50,000 and $150,000.<\/p>\n
If you receive mail like this, you should never panic. If you look at the extortion mail there are clues that reveal that the mail is a hoax:<\/p>\n
If you ever receive emails like these, please report is to the Information Technology Cybersecurity Team using the following method:<\/p>\n
Send the spam\/phishing mail to\u00a0help@sun.ac.za<\/a> and\u00a0sysadm@sun.ac.za.<\/a><\/p>\n Attach the phishing or suspicious mail on to the message if possible. [Article by David Wiles]<\/p>\n [:]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [:en] There is no need to panic or be in anyway concerned for your personal safety about the latest batch of \u201cphishing\u201d emails that are going out with \u201cdeath threats\u201d or extortion regarding your \u201calleged\u201d online activity around pornography sites etc. A simple Google search using the following term \u201cI Was Paid To Kill You […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":259,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20382,29187],"tags":[20381,54496],"class_list":["post-12982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-email","category-security-2","tag-phishing","tag-report-phishing"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-09 21:37:26","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/259"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12982"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13135,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12982\/revisions\/13135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n1. Start up a new mail addressed to sysadm@sun.ac.za<\/a> (CC: help@sun.ac.za<\/a>)
\n2. Use the Title \u201cSPAM\u201d (without quotes) in the Subject.
\n3. With this New Mail window open, drag the suspicious spam\/phishing mail from your Inbox into the New Mail Window. It will attach the mail as an enclosure and a small icon with a light yellow envelope will appear in the attachments section of the New Mail.
\n4. Send the mail.<\/p>\n