You sent an automatic payment email scam?

[Tabby]

I was just scanning my spam folder and I noticed I have a whole lot of these in there. To the best that I can tell, nothing has been charged to my credit card or anything else. I'm assuming it's a scam but I'm afraid to open the emails in case I activate it somehow. Does anyone know how these work? Is there a way I can stop them from coming - even though they go to spam they are disconcerting. Thanks.

[Quelah]

No advice cause I'm not a techie but its good to check your credit once in a while.

[Imperini]

If you figure out a way to stop these from coming please let us all know. I responded to a fake ad for something on kijiji ages ago and they tried to scam me, when that didn't work they obviously sold or gave out my email address because shortly thereafter I started getting tons of spam emails. It has tapered off, but every once in a while I'll get a big wave of them. Short of changing email addresses I'm not sure there's really anything to be done for it.

In the meantime these sorts of emails typically either want you to click a link or download an attachment. The idea being if they can get you to click on a link and try to log in, then they get your account information. If you don't do these things then you should be safe looking at the email but not going to any links or downloading any attachments though I always recommend a good anti-virus just in case.

[Tabby]

I'm not sure how they got my email addy but my first one came from Apple and when I checked my account it was fine. I alerted Apple about it and haven't got another from them since. Now I get them from almost everything including some businesses that I deal with and some that I don't. They all go into my spam and I don't open any of them. I worry that one of these days I'll miss a real bill. I've resisted getting e-billing to the extent that I possibly can, mostly because I get so much junk as it is, but this is another reason not to go electronic for important things.