Not much makes us feel more vulnerable than learning of the passing of a friend or family member. Especially heart-wrenching would to be to learn the bad news by way of an email. How would you feel if you received a message through the Internet from a funeral home under the subject line “Funeral notification?”
I received such a message earlier this week, and let me tell you, my mind went all over the place trying to “guess” who had passed. The few seconds I spent wondering who died was agonizing. I quickly started to open the email, and then my intuition took over and gave me pause. Could this be a hoax? Could it be a demonic portal to some virus-spreading sycophant’s lair? It turns out that my sixth sense was right on. Under investigation, I discovered that the message was indeed fit only for my Spam bucket.
Here is how the email read:
“For this unprecedented event, we offer our deepest prayers of condolence and invite to you to be present at the celebration of your friends life service on Thursday, January 17, 2014 that will take place at Eubank Funeral Home at 11:00 a.m. Please find invitation and more detailed information about the farewell ceremony here.”
The word “here” at the end of the sentence is highlighted in blue, inviting me, the reader, to click for more details— no doubt allegedly allowing me to learn the name of the “deceased.”
In my case, the notification claims to be from a person named Kevin Kelly, who represents himself as a receptionist at the funeral home.
According to a Spam-buster type of website that I checked out, the links from that email point to a website that is programmed to serve malware.
Reading further into the matter, I discovered that the Eubank Funeral Home is aware of the Spam campaign that is using and abusing its name. In fact the company posted the following warning in two places on its website: “Urgent warning: An email has been sent out appearing to come from Eubank Funeral Home. Please do not open the link as it is Spam. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please do not call us to report this. Thank you.”
No doubt there are other variations of this email floating around, and the company name, email address and sender’s name may be different than I show above.
The lesson here is to always be ultra-careful before clicking on any links within an unsolicited email. And, for goodness sakes, don’t believe anyone who sends you a message pretending to be from another country claiming to have information regarding the millions of dollars that you have won or recently inherited. Trust your instincts. And if you can’t trust your instincts, trust your mom, who no doubt told you, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!” Mom wouldn’t lie to you.
Note to those posing on the Internet as funeral home employees: I believe there is a special place in Hell for you scammers. I hope it is not only extremely hot there, but that you will all be forced to wear itchy, woolen long johns (with NO flap in the back) while listening to nothing but dogs barking and bad yodeling as you watch a constant loop of The Brady Bunch Variety Hour, a television series which aired on ABC between 1976-1977 and was produced by Sid and Marty Krofft (the same folks who brought us H.R. Pufnstuf). Now THAT’S HELL!
