Received an email threat at work

[Cwenthryth]

So yesterday I wrote a comment on Julie Bindel’s piece in the Sunday Times supportive of her. I used my own name.

This morning, I have come to work and opened my work email, to find this email.

It’s probably spam. I don’t think my work email is that easily available, you could google and find my department but that wouldn’t come directly to my personal email.

I hope it’s just spam, there’s nothing direct in it, it doesn’t mention my name or any specific reason.

But should I take action or just delete & block? I thought I’d ask on here in case anyone else has been similarly targeted.

It's spam. Just delete.

work email? contact your IT department and report.

our it has a policy for those email. most of those get filtered out before they reach you but some slip through.

Looks like spam to me. They want 1200 what? Eccles cakes? (Actually so do I, yum)

Can you send it to your IT Dept to look at as it’s come to your work email? You probably should in fact as others in your company may have been targeted. That’s what I’d do, but I’d also assume it’s nothing

. It’s shit that we’re all so jumpy isn’t it?

You need to let your IT Security team know.

Bitcoin, was my interpretation, but I don’t know much about that kind of thing!

Spam but let your it team know

I get these emails as well.

Hopefully spam, but forward to your work's IT department. (We have procedures for doing this sort of thing at my work place - if yours is big enough, it should have similar).

So sorry, this must have been such an upsetting start to your morning.

It's such a difficult one isn't it? I too have been cautiously gender critical under newspaper articles in my own name (largely because should anyone ever try to doxx me I want to be able to say "sod off, it's already in the public domain that I have these political views, and freedom of belief is legally protected in our country".) But I hadn't thought of this sort of blackmail attempt. Hopefully though, it is just spam (the complete lack of any specific details about you or what you're supposed to have done would strongly suggest that it's just spam).

Yes, spam. I get similar, demanding payment in bitcoin - for weirdly small amounts - because they've been 'watching what I do on porn sites through my webcam' (I don't visit porn sites and don't have a webcam).

Just delete and ignore.

The currency this person trades in seems to be Bitcoin. Seems unusual in itself to me, but all my knowledge of this stuff comes from tv so what do I know?

Anyway, it may have been sent to you at your work email but doesn't seem to have a name on it (unless you cleverly masked it). That is typical of these spammers, as it the bad English, which this has in spades. Def report to your IT people then forget it.

It's spam and has NOTHING to do with any online comments you may have made. This is just a spammer who has worked out that not everyone can be frightened by mention of them having watched porn (because not everyone watches porn.)

Not pleasant to receive - but it is spam. They have no idea who you are or where you live.

Let your work IT dept know, you probably have a spam/malicious email policy to follow.

1 bitcoin is worth £6k. Gosh, this person is optimistic aren’t they? More likely to get the Eccles cakes I’d have thought

So they’re after 7 million quid

Good luck with that

Any message that is genuinely for you, personally, will have your name on it. This doesn’t. It’s just been sent out to lots of random email addresses. Either delete and move on or let your IT people know.
Either way don’t worry about it.

It's spam, block the sender and delete it. I get these, saying my work email has been hacked etc, load of rubbish.

Having worked in a senior capacity in an organization where employees occasionally received threats, my thought is that you should let your IT and manager know. We had a threat policy/procedure to assess it and put any necessary safeguards in place. Since you received it at work your employer could end up responsible if anything should happen. That said, it looks like a spam/hoax to me. Sorry you received this.

It also looks like it went through google translate on its way to you so I doubt the writer is geographically close enough to make good on their weird purchase order

Spam.
Dodgy English.
Forward it to your IT dept.

Report to IT - this is classic phishing (and your organisation will have a vested interest in stopping it).

While I obviously can't divulge where or how exactly, I work in a role where - every once in a while - we may get genuine threats. One of the hallmarks of anything we'd actually refer to Corporate Security (as opposed to IT as a phishing attempt) is that genuine threats tend to be specific:

So "Hello, I randomly happen to have you on my target list for no discernible reason" (like the OP) will be interpreted as spam/phishing. Whereas I'd refer "Hello Taken, I'm a representative of the accountants' rebellion. Pull your firm's project to replace our jobs with AI driven bots - or else ..." to Corp. Sec.

In a nutshell, what you're looking at here is a Nigerian Prince of the late 2010s.

Hope this helps.

I had one of these to my work email a month back.. exactly word for word. Its a scam.. Delete and forget about it

I'm sorry this has happened to you - tell your IT department but I also agree its spam.

I get loads of these on my work email, usually about videos of me watching porn, silly them as I never visit porn sites. Just delete it and try not to open in future.

My 14 yr old got one of the porn ones...specifically teen porn! Yes give it to IT they can block. Distressingly common.

I had the porn one the other day and as someone said above, I don’t watch porn and never have. It’s definitely spam.