According to this email, which purports to be from “Admin” at your email service provider, you have a new voice message waiting.
The email urges you to click a button to listen to the message before it expires.
However, the email is not from your service provider and clicking won’t take you to any waiting voice message.
Instead, clicking takes you to a scam website. Once on the site, you may be tricked into entering your email address and account password, ostensibly so that you can access the promised voice message. If you proceed, online crooks can use the details you supply to hijack your email account and send spam and scam messages in your name.
They may also be able to access other services such as app stores and online file storage that are linked to the same account. Once in, they can make fraudulent app store purchases, rummage through your personal files, and possibly even steal your identity using the information they have collected.
Alternatively, the scam website may try to trick you into downloading and installing malware. The purpose of such malware may vary. It may be designed to collect sensitive information such as banking passwords from your computer. Or it could be ransomware that locks up your computer files and demands that you pay a fee to get an unlock key.
Criminals regularly use fake voice message notifications to trick people into installing malware or visiting spam or scam websites.
A screenshot of the scam email:
A transcript of the scam email:
Subject: You have a new voice message.
Dear [email address]
You have received a voice message.
Kindly listen to the message before it expires.
Listen to message
Thanks,
The [email address] Admin.
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
