The IT Nerd

A few months ago I told you about a scam the takes advantage of you if you have been surfing for porn. It leverages the fact that your email address might have been part of data breach in the past to try and get you to send a few hundred dollars to a bitcoin wallet. This is called extortion phishing. Well, I have been investigating a new version of this scam that has recently started to make the rounds. Unlike the last one, potential victims get more specific and the dollar value is higher. Here’s an example of what potential victims get:

I know <Password Deleted> one of your passphrase. Lets get right to purpose. Nobody has compensated me to check about you. You may not know me and you’re most likely wondering why you are getting this e-mail?

Well, I placed a software on the X videos (pornographic material) web-site and guess what, you visited this site to have fun (you know what I mean). When you were viewing video clips, your browser started out working as a Remote control Desktop with a key logger which provided me with access to your screen and also cam. after that, my software program obtained all your contacts from your Messenger, social networks, as well as e-mail . After that I created a double-screen video. First part displays the video you were watching (you’ve got a nice taste ; )), and next part displays the recording of your web cam, & its you.

You do have two alternatives. Lets analyze these possibilities in details:

Very first choice is to skip this email message. As a result, I will send out your very own video to all your your contacts and also think regarding the shame that you receive. And as a consequence if you are in a romance, just how this will affect?

In the second place solution would be to compensate me $7000. We are going to describe it as a donation. As a consequence, I most certainly will promptly erase your video. You can carry on your way of life like this never happened and you will never hear back again from me.

You’ll make the payment through Bitcoin (if you do not know this, search “how to buy bitcoin” in Google search engine).

BTC Address: <Bitcoin address deleted>
[CASE-sensitive copy & paste it]

Should you are thinking of going to the authorities, good, this email message can not be traced back to me. I have covered my actions. I am also not trying to ask you for money a lot, I want to be paid for. You have one day to pay. I’ve a special pixel in this mail, and now I know that you have read through this mail. If I don’t get the BitCoins, I definitely will send your video recording to all of your contacts including friends and family, colleagues, and so on. Nonetheless, if I do get paid, I will destroy the recording immediately. This is the non:negotiable offer, and thus do not waste my personal time & yours by responding to this email. If you want to have proof, reply with Yea then I will send out your video recording to your 7 friends.

Now let’s dissect this message. The fact that the scammer has the victim’s password is likely due to the fact that the victim has been a victim of a data leak which included the victim’s password along with their email address. Both are now being used to give the message that the scammer sends some degree of validity. But in reality, they don’t know anything more than the email address and password. The second thing that you should note is that the scammer claims to have covered his tracks and you should not respond to this message. but if you want proof you should respond to this message and the scammer will send a video to seven of your friends. That makes no sense. Now just for fun, I ran a check on the bitcoin address and it had no transactions. Now the person who got the above email didn’t pay up and to nobody’s surprise, no videos were emailed out.

In short, this is a complete scam. So how do you avoid being scammed? Here’s a list of things that you can do.

1. If you have received an email like the one above. Remember that this is likely a scam. But if you want to be sure you can call in a professional to check your computer over to make sure that there’s nothing lurking on it. There likely won’t be but you can never be too careful.
2. Under no circumstances should you pay up. The main reasons are that not only does it make the scumbags behind this scam want to keep doing it, but because many BitCoin exchanges or ATMs do not require you to verify your identity. Thus there’s no way for the scammer to tie you to the money that they could get from you. Which means that they have no way to delete the data that they allegedly collected if you pay them. Which means that they’re lying about having data on you.
3. You should check to see if your email address has been part of a data breach that would be the source of this email. Take a visit to www.haveibeenpwned.com and type your email address into it. You’ll likely find that it has been and your email and password have been compromised and are floating around the Internet. You should discontinue the use of that password immediately and change it. In fact, you should use different passwords for your online services that is made up of a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and special characters.
4. If you are the least bit paranoid of someone recording you through your webcam, cover it with a piece of tape or a cover when not in use. Or you can disable it entirely. Ditto for the microphone. You should also have up to date antivirus as well.

The bottom line is this. These scumbags want you to be the 1% of people who fall for something like this. Don’t be a victim. Don’t respond. Don’t pay them. Just ignore them. They are scumbags and don’t deserve your attention or more importantly your money.

This entry was posted on July 27, 2018 at 9:22 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Scam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.