Ever since I started writing the Red Tape Chronicles, people (mostly journalists) have complained that I cover two very different topics: tech gone bad and consumer ripoffs. I’ll admit it: I don’t care. Often enough, these subjects overlap. You don’t care if a hacker is stealing your money or a cable company is stealing your money. It’s all digital Red Tape, a 21st Century hassle, to you.
Once in a while my subjects neatly overlap, however, and that happened today. Here’s a story that combines debt collection and computer viruses. I’ve seen a booby-trapped email that uses an extraordinary threat in an attempt to trick recipients into clicking on an attachment. The email says the recipient owed a debt, and that debt has landed the consumer in court. An enticeing attachment supposedly contains court documents for review.
Here’s the full email:
Dear Customer,
We regret to inform you that due to your unpaid debt amount of $745.47 to Sandor Inc., from November 31, 2015 we have passed your case to the court.
Your prompt attention is required to resolve this issue.
Attached you can find your invoice and case information to review.
Plenty of things about this note should give you pause. The attachment is a zip file. You should never, never, ever click on a zip file unless you expected one. Even then, I’d take great precautions, such as calling the sender to double-check.
But there are more obvious alarm bells. Who is Sandor? What does “passed your case to the court” mean?
Then the kicker: November 31 comes around very, very rarely.
Still, with a remarkable one-third of Americans with a debt in collections, it’s easy to imagine someone shocked into clicking on the file in a moment of weakness. Don’t do that.
And while you’re at it, one great end-of-year habit is to take a (free!) peek at your credit report at AnnualCreditReport.com. If you know your credit is clean, an email like this won’t scare you. My partners at Credit.com also offer you a truly free credit score, too.
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