E-mail hoax uses Justice Department name
The U.S. Department of Justice has learned that another bogus e-mail bearing the agency’s name and logo has been circulated to at least 20,000 Internet users.
The message is a hoax and recipients should not respond or open any of its attachments.
The Department of Justice did not send these unsolicited email messages—and would not send such messages to the public via e-mail, the agency said. Similar hoaxes recently have used the names of various other governmental entities, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Internal Revenue Service. The e-mail messages contain a malicious attachment as well as random text used to defeat spam filters. E-mail users should be especially wary of unsolicited warning messages that purport to come from U.S. governmental agencies directing them to click on file attachments or to provide sensitive personal information.