I swear, these extortion phishing scams are multiplying like weeds. Hot off of this scam that I brought to your attention a few days ago, another one has been brought to my attention. Before I get to that, let me recap what this scam is all about.
The scammer claims to have recorded you while watching porn and has video proof of that. The scammer then goes on to claim that they will release it to your friends, family and the like if you don’t pay them in Bitcoin which is untraceable. So what the scam is doing is leveraging the fact that watching porn and “pleasuring” yourself to put it kindly is seen as something negative. And having a video of you doing this would be embarrassing. Thus you would be inclined to pay to keep it quiet.
Now over to today’s scam. The email that I got looks like this:
Hello!
Have you recently noticed that I have e-mailed you from your account?
Yes, this simply means that I have total access to your device.
For the last couple of months, I have been watching you.
Still wondering how is that possible? Well, you have been infected with malware originating from an adult website that you visited. You may not be familiar with this, but I will try explaining it to you.
With help of the Trojan Virus, I have complete access to a PC or any other device.
This simply means I can see you at any time I wish to on your screen by simply turning on your camera and microphone, without you even noticing it. In addition, I have also got access to your contacts list and all your correspondence.
You may be asking yourself, “But my PC has an active antivirus, how is this even possible? Why didn’t I receive any notification?” Well, the answer is simple: my malware uses drivers, where I update the signatures every four hours, making it undetectable, and hence keeping your antivirus silent.
I have a video of you wanking on the left screen, and on the right screen – the video you were watching while masturbating.
Wondering how bad could this get? With just a single click of my mouse, this video can be sent to all your social networks, and e-mail contacts.
I can also share access to all your e-mail correspondence and messengers that you use.
All you have to do to prevent this from happening is – transfer bitcoins worth $1450 (USD) to my Bitcoin address (if you have no idea how to do this, you can open your browser and simply search: “Buy Bitcoin”).
My bitcoin address (BTC Wallet) is: [Bitcoin Address Redacted]
After receiving a confirmation of your payment, I will delete the video right away, and that’s it, you will never hear from me again.
You have 2 days (48 hours) to complete this transaction.
Once you open this e-mail, I will receive a notification, and my timer will start ticking.
Any attempt to file a complaint will not result in anything, since this e-mail cannot be traced back, same as my bitcoin id.
I have been working on this for a very long time by now; I do not give any chance for a mistake.
If, by any chance I find out that you have shared this message with anybody else, I will broadcast your video as mentioned above.
So let’s unpack this:
- The email appears to have come from your email account. But all that means is that that someone has spoofed your email address. This is surprisingly easy to do. And scammers leverage that to make these scam emails seem more legitimate. But they’re not and the scammer doesn’t have control over anything.
- This email also says is that the so called hacker installed the “trojan virus” on your computer which is a piece of software that can download your data, log your keystrokes and control your webcam and microphone. Now this software does exist. But if you have up to date and functional anti-virus software, it should be able to deal with it. And if you want a bit of extra security, cover up your webcam with a piece of tape. The scammer’s talk about changing signatures of his software to evade detection is BS by the way. If he could do that, he’d be working for some nation state launching targeted spyware and ransomware attacks rather than doing scams on individuals.
- The scammer wants you to pay him via Bitcoin as that’s untraceable. But that works both ways. There’s no way for the scammer to know that you’ve paid him which means that there’s no way for him to delete the data that they allegedly have on you. Related to that, I checked the value of the Bitcoin address and it seems that plenty of people have fallen for that scam based on the number of transactions that have been made into this wallet.
- The email claims to be able to transmit to the scammer when you’ve opened the email. That sounds like the scammer has embedded a tracking pixel into the email. Marketing companies use these to see if you’ve opened an email along with gathering information about you, and Apple for example has countermeasures against all of that. I found no evidence that this email contained anything like this.
- As usual, the English used in this email is poor. A hallmark of scam emails.
This in short, this is a scam email that you should delete the second it hits your inbox. While scam emails like this don’t have to have a huge number of people falling for it to be successful, you shouldn’t be the person who falls for it. And if you have any concerns about the security of your computer, I would contact a professional who can take a look at your computer to see if there are any issues with it.
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This entry was posted on September 8, 2022 at 9:31 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Scam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Another Extortion Phishing Email #Scam Is Making The Rounds… Let Me Tell You About It
I swear, these extortion phishing scams are multiplying like weeds. Hot off of this scam that I brought to your attention a few days ago, another one has been brought to my attention. Before I get to that, let me recap what this scam is all about.
The scammer claims to have recorded you while watching porn and has video proof of that. The scammer then goes on to claim that they will release it to your friends, family and the like if you don’t pay them in Bitcoin which is untraceable. So what the scam is doing is leveraging the fact that watching porn and “pleasuring” yourself to put it kindly is seen as something negative. And having a video of you doing this would be embarrassing. Thus you would be inclined to pay to keep it quiet.
Now over to today’s scam. The email that I got looks like this:
Hello!
Have you recently noticed that I have e-mailed you from your account?
Yes, this simply means that I have total access to your device.
For the last couple of months, I have been watching you.
Still wondering how is that possible? Well, you have been infected with malware originating from an adult website that you visited. You may not be familiar with this, but I will try explaining it to you.
With help of the Trojan Virus, I have complete access to a PC or any other device.
This simply means I can see you at any time I wish to on your screen by simply turning on your camera and microphone, without you even noticing it. In addition, I have also got access to your contacts list and all your correspondence.
You may be asking yourself, “But my PC has an active antivirus, how is this even possible? Why didn’t I receive any notification?” Well, the answer is simple: my malware uses drivers, where I update the signatures every four hours, making it undetectable, and hence keeping your antivirus silent.
I have a video of you wanking on the left screen, and on the right screen – the video you were watching while masturbating.
Wondering how bad could this get? With just a single click of my mouse, this video can be sent to all your social networks, and e-mail contacts.
I can also share access to all your e-mail correspondence and messengers that you use.
All you have to do to prevent this from happening is – transfer bitcoins worth $1450 (USD) to my Bitcoin address (if you have no idea how to do this, you can open your browser and simply search: “Buy Bitcoin”).
My bitcoin address (BTC Wallet) is: [Bitcoin Address Redacted]
After receiving a confirmation of your payment, I will delete the video right away, and that’s it, you will never hear from me again.
You have 2 days (48 hours) to complete this transaction.
Once you open this e-mail, I will receive a notification, and my timer will start ticking.
Any attempt to file a complaint will not result in anything, since this e-mail cannot be traced back, same as my bitcoin id.
I have been working on this for a very long time by now; I do not give any chance for a mistake.
If, by any chance I find out that you have shared this message with anybody else, I will broadcast your video as mentioned above.
So let’s unpack this:
This in short, this is a scam email that you should delete the second it hits your inbox. While scam emails like this don’t have to have a huge number of people falling for it to be successful, you shouldn’t be the person who falls for it. And if you have any concerns about the security of your computer, I would contact a professional who can take a look at your computer to see if there are any issues with it.
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This entry was posted on September 8, 2022 at 9:31 am 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.