No, a hitman with a soft heart and a love of gold is not holding your life for ransom.
See this and other scams bad guys are using to try to get your money.
Watch our report here:
If someone tells you that you have the spider virus, watch out.
Attackers are sending messages saying they put the “spider virus” on your computer — and they’ll delete all your files in four days if you don’t pay up.
It’s a new kind of ransomware using Office documents that show up as attachments, said cybersecurity company Netskope.
The attackers give you a video guide to tell you how to get digital money — bitcoin — so you can pay the very small ransom of about seven dollars.
Right now, this seems to be targeting Eastern Europe, but these kinds of attacks often spread.
Part of the Spider Virus ransom note. Image: Netskope
To avoid the Spider Virus and others like it, watch out for “macros,” according to Netskope.
You should disable macros in Office and be cautious when an e-mail asks you to enable macros to see a document.
Fake hitman scam
Another crazy email scam tells you it could be the most important message of your life.
The sender — a hitman — who says they were ordered to kill you.
But, for a small fee, they won’t do it.
For .08 Bitcoin, which could be around $13,000 right now, they won’t carry out your assassination.
A fellow named Dave Lass posted a copy of the email on the Spiceworks site asking if anyone had seen this kind of threatening e-mail before.
Fake hitman e-mail. Image: Dave Lass
Even the police chief in a town in New York state got one of these rule-breaking hitman messages.
Security company Sophos says if you get this e-mail, don’t reply and don’t worry, but be sure to mark it as spam, because that will help spam filters learn that the message is not welcome.
See other alerts:
Scam Alert #3 — Coin hacks & fake Netflix e-mails
Scam Alert #4 — Porn ads for kids & disappearing banks
Scam Alert #5 — Stealing your phone number & fake keypads
See more Scam Alerts here at Archer News.
Main image: Spider on computer. Image: Dsndrn-Videolar