Lyn Whitehead Lancashire.pnn.police.uk Email Phishing / Virus / Hacking Threat

I just had an email from [email protected], delivering an invoice for payment. It is a Word doc, but I have not yet opened it. It is obviously a scam of some sort – and one that has not be picked up by Google (I use Gmail and they catch a lot of spam and phishing messages).

The email reads:

Hello

Please find attached an invoice that is now due for payment.

Regards

Lyn

Lyn Whitehead (10688)

Business Support Department – Headquarters

If you get an email like this, don’t open the attachment, don’t reply. Just delete it. If you open the email you are not at risk – it is only if you open the attachment that there may be a problem. It depends on the nature of the doc – whether virus or phishing. There appears (judging from all the comments) that many people are being targeted with this today – so don’t worry, it is not just you!

Sane Security have also picked this up – read about it here. Apparently, the attached document will auto run on Windows, and therefore infect your PC with something pretty nasty.

What is unclear is, how is somebody sending spam mail from a UK Police email address? I cannot dig deeper right now (on my lunch break!) so if anybody knows, feel free to comment below – update: lots of useful comments already, please do not post “me too” comments though!