14 DAY TRIAL // The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warned the public to avoid falling victim to an on-going mass e-mail scheme where computer users receive unsolicited e-mails which appear to have been sent by the FBI.
The text of the message says that the FBI has been monitoring the user's Internet activity, and the Internet Fraud Complaint Center inside the Federal Bureau discovered the users accessed illegal web sites. The e-mails then direct recipients to open an attachment and answer questions. The attachments contain a computer virus.
Obviously, these e-mails did not come from the FBI. Recipients of this or similar solicitations should know that the FBI does not engage in the practice of sending unsolicited e-mails to the public in this manner.
According to the FBI's statement about this case, "opening e-mail attachments from an unknown sender is a risky and dangerous endeavor as such attachments frequently contain viruses that can infect the recipient's computer. The FBI strongly encourages computer users not to open such attachments."
The FBI takes this matter seriously and is running a full investigation to discover the origin of the malicious email. Users receiving e-mails of this nature are encouraged to report it to the Internet Crime Complaint Center via http://www.ic3.gov.