Did you get a suspicious email claiming you owe money for recently running a red light?

The scammers have evolved since the days of the wealthy Nigerian prince offering us a fortune. These days, it seems like we have to be on the lookout 24/7 for scammers or generally anything that seems suspicious involving our personal or financial information.

Luckily, most email platforms provide some layer of security to either warn us when something doesn’t seem right or block the email from ever getting to us altogether. However, every now and then a good scam can get through the cracks.

Recently, I received a peculiar email sent from the “Department of Transportation”. I curiously opened the email to find out that somehow how I had run a red light a few weeks ago, and they inconspicuously tracked down my email address to issue the citation. Naturally, red flags were raised early and often for me on this email, but, since it was able to penetrate my security system, I wanted to pass this along to you in case you receive the same email.

Like I do anytime I receive an email that just doesn’t feel right, I looked right away to see the exact email address it was sent from, not just the customizable name they wanted me to see. When I did, I found that it was sent from the address, “[email protected]”. Then, I copied that email address into Google to see if this scam had been reported yet.

Be on the lookout for an email like the one described here!