Email inboxes are currently being hit by ‘Neighborhood Safety Warning’ messages that supposedly warn about pedophiles.
The warning messages claim that you are receiving the information because sex offender activity has been detected in your area. It advises you to click a link ‘if you would like to know who they are, where they live, and how you can protect your family from sexual predators’.
The email purports to be from an organisation called ‘Amber Child Safety’.
However, the emails are not genuine warnings about sexual predators and they are not from any legitimate child safety organisation. In fact, the deceptive messages are just spam designed solely to trick you into visiting a decidedly dodgy ‘Shoppers Dream’ website. The site contains no information of any kind about sexual predators or child safety issues.
The site tries to get you to sign up to receive ‘special offers’ sent directly to your inbox. To subscribe, you are required to provide your name, address, phone number and other personal information. However, clauses in the site’s privacy policy state that your information will be shared with third parties, affiliates, and vendors. Thus you may soon begin receiving emails, phone calls, and letters from various companies intent on selling you various products and services.
The bottom line? This company is willing to use spam campaigns to promote its services. It is also willing to deliberately and wilfully misrepresent itself by claiming that its lure emails are legitimate child safety warnings about sexual predators. Any company that uses such tactics loses all credibility and certainly does not deserve your trust.
If you receive one of these fake pedophile alert emails, just delete it. Note also that similar tactics have been used previously to distribute malware.
Example
Subject: ALERT: Pedophiles in your area
Importance Notice
After considerable thought and with an ache in my heart, I have decided that the time has come to close down the Hoax-Slayer website.These days, the site does not generate enough revenue to cover expenses, and I do not have the financial resources to sustain it going forward.
Moreover, I now work long hours in a full-time and physically taxing job, so maintaining and managing the website and publishing new material has become difficult for me.
And finally, after 18 years of writing about scams and hoaxes, I feel that it is time for me to take my fingers off the keyboard and focus on other projects and pastimes.
When I first started Hoax-Slayer, I never dreamed that I would still be working on the project all these years later or that it would become such an important part of my life. It's been a fantastic and engaging experience and one that I will always treasure.
I hope that my work over the years has helped to make the Internet a little safer and thwarted the activities of at least a few scammers and malicious pranksters.
A Big Thank You
I would also like to thank all of those wonderful people who have supported the project by sharing information from the site, contributing examples of scams and hoaxes, offering suggestions, donating funds, or helping behind the scenes.I would especially like to thank David White for his tireless contribution to the Hoax-Slayer Facebook Page over many years. David's support has been invaluable, and I can not thank him enough.
Closing Date
Hoax-Slayer will still be around for a few weeks while I wind things down. The site will go offline on May 31, 2021. While I will not be publishing any new posts, you can still access existing material on the site until the date of closure.Thank you, one and all!
Brett Christensen,
Hoax-Slayer
