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Scam porn extortion email: 'Be sure to read this message! Your personal data is threatened! - I made a video showing how you satisfy yourself'
With news stories of hacking into credit card companies, Facebook accounts, email accounts, cell phones being hacked and more, scammers are busy trying to take advantage of fears of being hacked. While it certainly is possible to have all of these hacked, many scammers simply prey upon consumers' fear of being hacked to extort their victims into surrendering money. The FBI is seeing an increase in the number of reported extortion attempts of a sexual nature; what's known as sextortion. In one recent month, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center, or IC3, received an additional 13,000 complaints about the sextortion scam over the previous months. Sextortion occurs when someone threatens to distribute your private and sensitive material if you don't provide them with images of a sexual nature, sexual favors, or money.
Here is a common, and unfortunately, popular example of this.
The email
A victim receives an email similar to the one below. In this email, the scammer claims:
- You visited a porn website.
- He installed software on porn to allow him to hack your device (computer, tablet, phone). He says that allowed "your browser initiated working as a RDP that has a key logger which gave me access to your screen and also web camera"
- His software "collected your complete contacts from your Messenger, Facebook, as well as emailaccount"
- He activated the camera on your device and recorded you watching porn and created a split screen video of you and the porn.
- He can tell that you read the email
- He can't be traced.
After making these claims, he then issues his threats: you pay him by bitcoin or he will send the video to everyone in your contact list.
Example scam email:
From:
[mailto: ]
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2019 6:11 PM
To:
Subject: Be sure to read this message! Your personal data is threatened!
Hello!
As you may have noticed, I sent you an email from your account.
This means that I have full access to your account.
I've been watching you for a few months now.
The fact is that you were infected with malware through an adult site that you visited.
If you are not familiar with this, I will explain.
Trojan Virus gives me full access and control over a computer or other device.
This means that I can see everything on your screen, turn on the camera and microphone, but you do not know about it.
I also have access to all your contacts and all your correspondence.
Why your antivirus did not detect malware?
Answer: My malware uses the driver, I update its signatures every 4 hours so that your antivirus is silent.
I made a video showing how you satisfy yourself in the left half of the screen, and in the right half you see the video that you watched.
With one click of the mouse, I can send this video to all your emails and contacts on social networks.
I can also post access to all your e-mail correspondence and messengers that you use.
If you want to prevent this,
transfer the amount of $756 to my bitcoin address (if you do not know how to do this, write to Google: "Buy Bitcoin").
My bitcoin address (BTC Wallet) is:
After receiving the payment, I will delete the video and you will never hear me again.
I give you 48 hours to pay.
I have a notice reading this letter, and the timer will work when you see this letter.
Filing a complaint somewhere does not make sense because this email cannot be tracked like my bitcoin address.
I do not make any mistakes.
If I find that you have shared this message with someone else, the video will be immediately distributed.
Best wishes!
The truth
Notice that except for your email address, all of the information
is vague, general and definitely not specific to you. Notice also
that he provides no proof or evidence of his claims. It's pretty
obvious that if you were to attempt to extort someone like this, you
would provide at least a brief clip of the video you claimed to have
to prove that you could follow through. This is an obvious sign of
the scam nature. Of course, if you don't visit porn websites,
then you would also obviously know immediately this is a scam.
Unless of course, you believe you watch porn in your sleep ("somnapornography"
While all of the claims are theoretically possible, it would take a pretty sophisticated scammer to achieve this. And a scammer like that is not going to target individuals; they'll go after corporations and bigger targets.
Variations
Some versions of the scam, like the one above, include one of the recipient's real passwords as "proof" that their claims are true. Criminals are sending emails and letters using their victims' authentic personally identifiable information to make their claims appear legitimate. How did they get your password? Most like they bought a list of usernames and passwords on the "dark web" from other hackers from a data breach like the ones you've heard about in the news: Experian, Yahoo, Wells Fargo, etc. Which means they are using a cut and paste program to send out thousands, or even millions of the scams.
What to do
-
First, do NOT reply to the scammer.
-
Do NOT pay the scammer.
-
Never send compromising images of yourself to anyone, no matter who they are or who they say they are.
-
Do not open attachments from people you do not know.
-
Turn off your electronic devices and web cameras - and cover or physically disconnect web cameras when you are not using them.
-
Report the scammer to Bitcoin (see below)
Report the scammer to Bitcoin
How To Report a Bitcoin Scam, Blackmail, Extortion or Theft:
-
Create a free account on Bitcoin (you need this to report a scam to them; it costs nothing and you don't need to give them any sensitive information; just an email address so they can get back to you)
-
Thenlogin on Bitcoin
-
Then click the "Report Scam" button on the page that comes up in step 3 (not here) (it looks like this:
)
If you are receiving sextortion threats, you are not alone. The FBI says in many sextortion cases, the perpetrator is an adult pretending to be a teenager, and you are just one of the many victims being targeted by the same person. If you believe you're a victim of sextortion, or know someone else who is, the FBI wants to hear from you:
Contact your local FBI office (or toll-free at 1-800-CALL-FBI).
Next, the FBI recommends that if you have experienced this situation please notify the IC3 by filing a complaint.
If the email contains information that identifies you personally
(other than your email address alone; for example, address, complete name, etc.)
you should contact your local or state police and
local FBI office.
If you also forward a copy of the emails you receive here, we will examine them as well.
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And another version: Porn watching extortion scam, version 3
For a comprehensive list of national and international agencies to report scams, see this page.