This is spam at the least – at worst, it’s a scam. Do not agree to send a read receipt. Do not download unnecessary content. Do not click links. Do not reply. Do not pass Go… etc.
As others have mentioned, protecting your contact details in whois information may help eliminate these emails; I’d also like to add some common signs of spam/scam emails:
- “Dear <generic name>”
Legitimate organisations will attempt to use your real name where they can – for example, by taking it from whois information, or by contacting your domain registrar to obtain your name and contact details. - “Click Here”
Legitimate (especially formal, like this) emails are drafted by people who are paid to come up with something better than “click this” for link text – “visit our website to retrieve the full report”, perhaps. - Bad grammar
Legitimate emails are written by people who are paid to write good English – and then they’re copy-checked before they ever get sent out. “There is also possibility”, “depend on severity”, and Unnecessary Capital Letters are generally not things that make it into professional communications. - Legal threats
People are more likely to get scared and do what the scammers want them to if they’re threatened with things they don’t understand, like legal proceedings – even if the threats aren’t actionable. - Unreasonable time limits
If a legitimate organisation needs to time-limit you, it’ll be on a scale of weeks, or multiple days at the very shortest. It’s highly unusual to be given just 24 hours to perform some action – unless, of course, someone wants to scare you into taking action without thinking about it first. - Unexpected attachment types
Attachments such as official reports will usually come as PDFs, or a link to a legitimate webpage. Anything else – an RTF, a Word document, a HTML file, or an executable, should raise a question.
None of these are 100% perfect indicators of scams, but each should raise a small flag – and the presence of multiple should make you highly suspicious. If in doubt, verify the organisation is legitimate, look up a contact email address for them (not the address the email came from, usually), and use that to ask if the email is legitimate. If it is, fine – if it’s not, you’ve done them a favour.