A new scam? Well, I haven't met this one before.

Originally Posted by hazel How would you know it was a scam?

Because it's well documented as a scam and in my spam folder there's literally dozens of these. The ones that are fun are where they've got a hold of an exploited database that contains un-encrypted passwords and you get a subject line of "I know your password is XXXXXXXXXX", they got my attention a couple of times as I was amused that it was a password I'd not used in years!

They can get your "contacts list" if they have compromised one of your contacts' PCs, phones, etc... that can happen. That's why address books in all forms are a security/privacy risk.

Then they can send scam emails to all or one and then if they get sucked in and respond with more info it can only get worse...

That scam email doesn't expose any of the contacts however, which would further convince the recipient they were in possession of it, so in this case they simply don't have a list - and the name of the recipient and the supposed video is simply generated from the email account the scam is sent to. It's completely generic, bulk spam - sent in the hope that someone will be socially engineered into falling for it...

Big one that's doing the rounds of my spam folder is the "Recover Your Lost / Stolen Funds" scam. Just another twist on the same old BS!