Is it time to do what Mark Zuckerberg does and put tape over your webcam? An Australian man found out the hard way that hackers have no problem hacking into a system and enabling the webcam. He was caught pleasuring himself.

He received an email telling him that if he didn't pay $10,000, the captured video would be released to all his Facebook friends and his co-workers.

"There was an email saying they were going to release footage to all my Facebook friends and people I worked with if I don't pay them money,” he said. "Initially I laughed."

He relented for a moment and haggled the price down to $3,000, but decided to stand strong. He informed his Facebook fans and co-workers of the scam. He never heard from the scammers again.

He is not the only one to be captured. Dozens of victims are posting about the gambit in a forum.

"The exact same thing happened to me, but I transferred around $1,000 via wire transfer to the person in the Ukraine,” said one victim. “Now in hindsight I know it was the wrong thing to do, but I was tunnel-visioned by fear and panic at the time. Nothing ever was sent out online, but I've now had to change my Facebook account name, shut down my LinkedIn out of fear of my work details being revealed and I'm afraid of what may arise in the future should I want to build a LinkedIn profile etc. again."

Another noted, "I had the exact same thing happen to me. Sent me a list of all my contacts and a copy of the video. I stressed out for a while, called the cops they said they couldn't do anything about it. So I ended up bluffing them and said I told everyone that matters to me about the video and couldn't afford to pay them. So they never sent the video."

So get out your tape or take your pleasure somewhere other than in front of your computer.

Source: Info Security