Looks believable enough

Jul 4, 2008 16:27 GMT  ·  By

It seems that somebody has decided to take advantage of the good name of Greg Abbott, the Attorney General for the state of Texas, USA. The whole thing came out when Greg Abbott received a message from Greg Abbott of course; you can imagine his surprise when he opened his inbox. The message uses a picture of his as well as the official banner of the Attorney Generals site.

The spam seems to originate from [email protected], is entitled "Attorney General of Texas", and includes the following text, "This is the office of the attorney general of Texas. We wish to inform you that your transaction with the United Nations concerning your package is a legitimate transaction and you must try and see you provide all that is been requested for the security of this great country. You are at a safe hand and we are giving you % 100 assurances to continue with them and make sure that your package is being released to you".

The weird thing is that the spam does not include a link to some virus infested site, or does it ask you to send money. As far as spam goes, there is usually a malicious intent behind the spammer's actions, but in this case it has yet to be determined.

Even more baffling is the fact that no one has complained about it. You would think that getting a message from the Attorney General would spark some sort of reaction from the public. I see two reasons why people have not said anything: they realized it was nothing more than a scam and deleted the message; or they read it, did understand what it was ranting about and disregarded it all together.

The Attorney General's office is warning Internet users not to respond to this message or any other future ones. If the message contains a web link, you should not click it, open it, run it, or save it. Texas citizens can get help from their ISP (Internet service provider) in the form of spam filters, spam blockers, and other forms of antispam software solutions.