Notice to Appear

[viridian5]

While I fell down the Tropes Hole for a few hours last night, I saw that TV Tropes' due South page appears to have mostly been written by RayV partisans. Not cool.

+++

This is probably spam e-mail, but it comes off as somewhat scary:

Notice to Appear,

Hereby you are notified that you have been scheduled to appear for your hearing that
will take

Comments

[grey853]

Big red spammy warnings going off on that one.

Courts always send a paper letter to document notification.

They do not sign Yours Truly

You're right never to open an attachment.

Call the court if you're concerned, but it's majorly spammy in nature.

[viridian5]

Yeah, I figured I should have gotten a paper letter or a summons or something

The other thing is that I have no idea what "the court of Washington" is supposed to be. Something in Washington, DC? No clue, so I couldn't call. *g*

Seriously, when I opened the thing I had a moment of panic before a "...wait a minute...."

[crescentium]

^ This!
I wouldn't open it.

[chomiji]

Me third - don't open it. Courts are notoriously technology-retro in how they handle business, and the idea that they would be sending this sort of thing by e-mail alone makes no sense.

Also, to my knowledge, there is no "court of Washington." For example, if they mean federal court in Washington, D.C., it might be the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. If it was one of the DC courts, it would be something like the Superior Court of the District of Columbia (note the lack of "Washington" in both of those). Meanwhile, a court in Washington state might be something like "Supreme Court of the State of Washington."

So, yeah.

[chomiji]

And - bingo!

Hearing of Your Case in Court NR Virus Emails:

'The email message below: "Hearing of your case in Court NR", has a malicious computer program attached that will infect your Windows computer if you open it. The message was not sent by any Court, tries to trick the recipients into opening the malicious attachment ... ' (Online Threat Alerts Site)

[viridian5]

Thank you very much!

[neotoma]

Wow, that's... probably a felon, to impersonate an officer of the court.

And it's totally designed to scare you into open that attachment. Kind of nasty.

[viridian5]

About twenty minutes after I posted this entry another e-mail with the same content and subject heading but a different sender appeared in my spam folder, so apparently this is a Thing.

[surranndie]

I got one of those too yesterday in my spam folder. Freaked me out too, considering a recent auto accident I had, but it is totally spam. Don't trust it. If it was any thing official from a court, it would come in the snail mail.

[viridian5]

Thanks. This is an especially nasty thing to try to pull on people during the holidays.