SMS Scam via Death Threat
By Pulkit Sharma

Even as every new technology makes our lives easier and more joyous, scammers and con artists will use it to hunt gullible victims on the internet.

As email became popular, the Nigerian mail scams came into play promising you a great reward if you sent a token advance of tens of thousands of rupees.  Next came Phishing, where innocent emails invited you to logon to your bank account only for the criminals to capture your passwords and cash. There are many variants of such scams and they have moved to major websites like Facebook, Orkut and Twitter.  More recently, the con artists sent SMSes to tell you about the BMW waiting for you in London.

Now comes something new. Sending a death threat via an SMS to force you to part with your banking userids and passwords.

Sydney Morning Herald is reporting:

“
The communications regulator has sounded the alarm after receiving a number of complaints from Australians who received SMS messages containing death threats.

The threats, which tell the victim "I am about to kill you" unless they contact an email address, are part of an SMS scam campaign designed to con targets out of personal details, cash and passwords.

ACMA chairman Chris Chapman said: "These threats are a particularly nasty type of scam. The messages should simply be ignored - they are intended to frighten recipients into providing money, credit card details and personal information to the scammer”
“

Do scammers seriously think they can frighten people out of their cash with death threats?  Having said that, stranger things have happened on the internet.