Many Australians are Receiving Death Threat Text Messages By: Nina Bharadwaj

     Many police businesses have alerted people in Australia on Monday. Apparently, many fake messages have gone out to citizens of Australia as death threats. They read mostly the same thing. People must pay 5,000 dollars or will be murdered. The detective, Brian Hay of the police agency in Queensland, said "Do not respond. Delete it immediately and don't panic, because that's what they prey upon."
     These messages have shown up on cellular devices as well as other means of technology, such as e-mail. Police were surprised by the range of this scam. Brian Hay also said "What is extraordinary in these circumstances is the extent of contact across the Australian landscape. We've never seen this before." The message reads "Sum1 paid me to kill you. Get spared, 48hrs to pay $5,000. If you inform the police or anybody, death is promised." Then the message is followed by an e-mail address to contact them.
     Past scams like this one have originated in the western part of Africa, mainly in Nigeria. Many police officials are thinking that it would be mostly seniors that would get this message, as they are not familiar with technology. Hay stated "They rely upon your fear to not think logically, but to respond in the manner in which they want you to. I would suspect that people have already fallen victim to this fraud." Supposedly this criminal has done this before for about 2 and a half years.
     Hay said "This is not a random event. This is organized crime. They've done their research. They've acquired their contact lists. They've paid for the distribution of text messages." If these people get the money they want, these texts will never stop.
Analysis: The author of this article, Ed Payne, wrote this article to inform people about a technological facade. The main idea of this article is that many people are receiving messages that are black mailing people. Police are telling them to not respond. This article is written for people in Australia. It is a warning to them to take caution of these texts and to not follow through and become a victim to this. This was a factual article, so there were no good or bad opinions on the subject.
This scares me. I think it is awful that someone is doing this to a whole bunch of innocent people. I would start freaking out if I received a message like this. I don't know why people would think it okay to make people lose a lot of money. I which people weren't so cruel and selfish. I really hope that this person gets got so that more people don't lose money and become a victim to this.
Source: http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/23/tech/australia-death-threat-text-messages/index.html