New ‘lawful citizen’ email scam

What’s the threat?

An epidemic of scam emails that try to scare you into responding by claiming that the sender has received a document containing your personal information. Action Fraud says it received over 200 reports in just three days, while several readers emailed us about it.

Although the email bears the usual scam hallmarks of bad spelling and grammar, it’s more convincing than most because it contains your name and address. The exact wording of the email varies, but the sender typically begins by saying they are “bothering you for a very important cause”.

The email goes on to explain that the attached document contains a “significant amount of individual info about you”, and that the sender obtained it probably as a result of a hack. They quote your address as an example of this data, and even describe themselves as a “lawful citizen” (or similar).

The document is named with your surname, and the email includes a password to open it.

What should you do?

Hard though it may be, resist all temptation to click the document. If you do, you’ll be asked to enable macros in Word (see screenshot), a common hackers’ trick. They want you to run code in the document that downloads a GIF file to your computer. This will connect to the scammers’ network in order to absorb your computer into a botnet.

If your firewall or antivirus blocks the GIF download, you’ll see a box telling you to turn it off. Right at the end, instead of seeing your personal information as promised, another box pop ups telling you that the “file is corrupted and cannot be opened”. At that point the damage has been done, and the scammers have control your PC.