A new wave of spam has sparked fears on Thursday, especially in the US: Hundreds of schools, corporations and government agencies have received threats of email from criminals. A bomb was placed in the building and will only explode if the victims paid a ransom, it was said. However, explosives have not been found in any case, and prosecutors believe the threat is not credible.
The blackmail message written in bumpy English reached schools, companies, hospitals and editorial offices. The addressees were supposed to pay $ 20,000 in bitcoin and stand there as quickly as possible.
The anti-terrorist unit of the New York Police Department confirmed that there were several such threats in the city and in other parts of the country. However, they are considered untrustworthy, according to the police.
Law enforcement officials in Florida and Idaho said there was no reason to believe that the threats had any effect. One of the mails has even been sorted out by the spam filter, according to a police officer in Idaho.
Several schools in the US were evacuated or closed earlier after the e-mail arrived. Pennsylvania State University warned its students by text message that several buildings on campus were threatened - and later gave the all-clear that the threat was probably part of a "national hoax". Also, a city hall in Illinois, a court in Atlanta, an editorial in North Carolina and several companies in Detroit were evacuated for safety's sake.
The large-scale scattering attack hit not only victims in the US, but also in other parts of the English-speaking world, such as New Zealand and Canada. In Toronto, a subway station was temporarily vacated because of the threat.