Remove “Elon Musk – Donation From Change” email

The “Elon Musk – Donation From Change” email falls into the scam email category. The email claims that the recipient is eligible to receive $1 million from Elon Musk, as part of his ongoing commitment to giving away money after Donald Trump’s victory in the US Presidential Election. The email aims to steal users personal information by tricking users into engaging with scammers.

 

 

The email is written in two languages, English and German. Both versions claim that the sender represents something called Donation for Change, and explains that users are eligible to claim $1 million from Elon Musk. This is supposedly part of his ongoing commitment to “giving for victory at the USA Election”. The email does not have much information but it is implied that if users initiate contact with the sender, they would receive instructions for how to proceed to get the $1 million.

It goes without saying that this email is a scam. However, it should be mentioned that this particular email may be more successful in deceiving users than usual. That is because news reports emerged that Elon Musk was doing a $1 million-a-day voter sweepstakes in relation to his endorsement of Donald Trump in the 2024 US Presidential Elections. While the election has ended, more susceptible users may believe the email contents if they have heard somewhere that a sweepstake was held. If they were to use Google to look into this, they would get results saying such a sweepstake was legitimate.

The full “Elon Musk – Donation From Change” email is below:

Subject: Zuschuss von Elon Musk.

Hallo,

Ich wende mich von Donation For Change an Sie. Sie haben Anspruch auf 1.000.000,00 $ von Elon Musk.

Wir wurden ausgewählt, um eine Liste von Überweisungen von X Company abzuwickeln, die durch eine großzügige Spende von Elon Musk im Rahmen seines anhaltenden Engagements für den Sieg bei den US-Wahlen ermöglicht wurde.
—

Hello,

I am reaching out to you from Donation For Change. You are eligible to claim $1,000,000.00 from Elon Musk.

We have been selected to process a list of transfer from X Company, made possible by a generous contribution from Elon Musk as part of his ongoing commitment to Giving for victory at the USA Election. —

Stephan Rawlins
Donation For Change
A legacy of generosity.

If recipients engage with the email and send a reply, they will likely be asked to share personal information such as their full name, home address, and phone number. As the conversation unfolds, the scammer might request even more sensitive details. Scammers often aim to build a rapport with the recipient in order to make it easier to manipulate them later. After a few exchanges, once they believe that a level of trust has been established, they typically will ask for money. The reasons for such requests tend to be vague and make very little sense. However, victims may not question those reasons simply because of the trust they’ve established with the sender.

When scammers collect personal information, they might use it for their own scams or sell it on hacker networks. Highly personal details like full names, addresses, and phone numbers enhance the effectiveness of future scams. Victims are at greater risk of becoming scam victims when addressed by name or when their personal information is involved. Furthermore, if scammers manage to phish credit card information from users, they may use it to make unauthorized purchases.

For future reference, any email claiming to offer large sums of money is always a scam. A good rule of thumb is that if something appears too good to be true, that’s because it is. The “Elon Musk – Donation From Change” email does not seem credible at all, and it should raise plenty of red flags for users. However, scammers generally target older individuals who may be less aware of such scams and therefore more likely to fall victim to them.

Remove “Elon Musk – Donation From Change” email

It’s worth mentioning why you received this email in the first place. Unfortunately, scam emails landing in your inbox means your email address has been leaked. This happens very often as many services have poor security and are targeted by cyberattacks. When an email address and other information is leaked or stolen, it usually ends up on hacker forums where the information is purchased by cybercriminals who will use it in their malicious operations. You can check haveibeenpwned to see whether your email address has been leaked. Unfortunately, you can do anything about your email address being leaked but you can at least be more vigilant when dealing with unsolicited emails.

If this email lands in your inbox, you can just remove “Elon Musk – Donation From Change” email from your inbox. If you have engaged with the email and provided your personal information, you need to be very careful with all unsolicited contact (whether through email or phone call), even if the person who contacts you has credible information related to you.