Extortion Scam Claims to Have Recorded You on Adult Websites
By Timothy Tibbetts |
The latest scam making the rounds is an extortion scam claiming that they have video and messages of you visiting a pornographic website that they created. Here's what you need to know.
The neat trick about this extortion attempt is that they may be using passwords from a data breach that gives you a good scare, especially if you reuse a password in multiple places, as many people do. This can give someone just enough of a scare that they might fall for it.
Regardless, if you stop and think about it for a minute, this scam attempt assumes you created an account on a pornographic website recently. My friend tells me that he never makes accounts on porn sites. My friend also tells me that he tends to stick to one or two better-known porn websites. My friend also tells me that he never visits adult websites ;)
We've had the pleasure of receiving two of these emails so far. We paid nothing and even emailed one of the scammers with some choice four-letter words. Seventy-two hours later, a big surprise, nothing happened. Here's one email we received:
All this scam has going for it is a good chance you'll spot a familiar password. The critical thing to take away from this is to make sure you've changed your passwords following all of the recent and future large data breaches.
Update: It's been reported that these scammers collected $50,000 in the first week.
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The neat trick about this extortion attempt is that they may be using passwords from a data breach that gives you a good scare, especially if you reuse a password in multiple places, as many people do. This can give someone just enough of a scare that they might fall for it.
Regardless, if you stop and think about it for a minute, this scam attempt assumes you created an account on a pornographic website recently. My friend tells me that he never makes accounts on porn sites. My friend also tells me that he tends to stick to one or two better-known porn websites. My friend also tells me that he never visits adult websites ;)
We've had the pleasure of receiving two of these emails so far. We paid nothing and even emailed one of the scammers with some choice four-letter words. Seventy-two hours later, a big surprise, nothing happened. Here's one email we received:
All this scam has going for it is a good chance you'll spot a familiar password. The critical thing to take away from this is to make sure you've changed your passwords following all of the recent and future large data breaches.
Update: It's been reported that these scammers collected $50,000 in the first week.
Similar:
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