IT Security Notes

The email
Here comes the email I received (unmodified, but obviously lined-wrapped):

Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 17:48:38 0100 (BST)
From: Kiss Death <kiss_death31@yahoo.co.in>
Subject: BE WARNED
To: kiss_death31@yahoo.co.in

Sorry Marie,

I am very Very sorry for you, is a pity that this is how your life is going to end is a pity but I will like to give you some chance to help your self RIP.

As you can see there is no need of introducing my self to you because I don't have any business with you, My work as I am talking to you now is just to kill you and a have to just do that as I have already been paid for that. Some one that I will not like to tell you the name came to me and told me that he want you and the whole of your family dead and he provide us with your name, Address and Phone Number and with my network I sent my boys to track you down and they have done that but I told them not to kill you that I will like to contact you and see if your life is Important to you so

Icalled the him back (I mean my client) and ask him of you email which I didn't tell him what I want to do with it and he gave it to me and I am using it to contact you. As I am writing to you now my men are monitoring you and there telling me every thing about you.

So I will like to know if you Like to live or die as some one has paid for you to die.

I am given you just two days to get back to me or I will just make a call and tell my boys to wipe you and your family out.

GOOD LUCK AS I AWAIT YOUR REPLY.

Grammar and familiarities
I'll pass on the obvious grammar mistakes (he did bother to run it through a spell checker of some sort at least!) and move on straight the to familiarities...

I must say I hate when somebody call me by my family name just like that, without any mister or whatever. I'm not a football star, nor a famous actor, so I don't deserve this treatment. Besides, it reminds me too much of the army style. I believe it would be very interesting to run that scam through an expert psychologist that would tell us what sentence or words the naive public would react to in order to reply. Looks like a new sort of "Nigerian Scam".

Obvious scam
Apparently the email comes from India if you believe at the usual From: kiss_death31@yahoo.co.in header. However it would be deceiving, since the email has actually been sent from West Africa (Nigeria ?):

Received: from [208.70.7.28]
   by web94304.mail.in2.yahoo.com
   via HTTP; Wed, 23 May 2007 17:48:38 BST


# host 208.70.7.28
host28.fobsky7.juch-tech.com

# whois 208.70.7.28
Juch-Tech Inc JUCHTECH (NET-208-70-0-0-1)
                        208.70.0.0 - 208.70.7.255
F.O.B. SKY Inc. JTI-FOBSKY-6 (NET-208-70-6-0-1)
                        208.70.6.0 - 208.70.7.255

# links http://www.fobsky.com/aboutus.htm
[...] We offer two way internet over satellite [...]
in West Africa [...]

So it doesn't start so well for him. Why would an Indian guy want to kill me, especially if he's in Africa (when I'm in the opposite part of the globe) ? (by the way, for those of you who don't know where is Nigeria it is located in West Africa...)

Then of course, the email strategy stinks of rat scam. The killer tells you he has been paid loads of money to kill you and all your family. He contacts you to tell you so. Hoping that you will propose him to pay him more to leave you and your family in peace. Obviously, if you are crazy/scared enough to reply him this, he will definitely tell you how much he supposedly was paid and ask you to increase that sum substantially to drop the case.

Conclusion
An obvious scam, so do not even bother to reply. Enough said.