I got a blackmail threat today!

[Korto]

In my email

I hope you don't really mind my english sentence structure, since im from Saudi arabia. I toxified your gadget with a virus and now have all of your personal info from your os.

It previously was set up on an adult web site then you have selected the movie and clicked on it, my application quickly gain access to your os.

After that, your front-camera started to record you flying solo, besides i caught a movie that you have seen.

Just after some time it also picked up every one of your device contact information. If you happen to wish me to erase your everything i possess - send me 500 us in btc it's a crypto. Its my btc account address - 1Ag5FRDHhcHNncuqpMwTzKepb4Z4QQ9Q5v

At this point you have 27 hours. to make a decision The minute i will get the deal i am going to eliminate this footage and every thing completely. Otherwise, you should remember that the footage is going to be submitted to all your buddies.

"Buddies"? I don't have fucking "Buddies". I have mates, so Get It Right!

At first I thought they were asking for 500 bitcoin. Talk about pricing yourself out of the market! But then I re-read it and saw it was US$500 in bitcoin, which made more sense. I suppose there would be people who could be embarrassed enough by video of them masturbating going to their email list to pay up. I mean, I would be embarrassed too, but not enough to actually give money to arseholes like this.
Their story that they infected my computer while I was visiting a porn site... Maybe I do visit porn sites, maybe I don't, but I'm an adult so it's plausible, and if you do then masturbating seems logical (else what's the point?).

There's only one problem with this whole thing.

I do not have, nor have I ever had, a computer camera hooked up to my computer. Nice try, now fuck off.


PS- I did briefly consider sending them a reply about exactly what they could do with themselves, but figured the only effect that would have would be to tell them someone monitors that email address.

[phred]

Ive never gotten a blackmail email that Im aware of... Maybe I just dont check my junk folder often enough. You should totally write them back and ask for an extension or something.

[LaCroix]

Got the same mail once, months ago - claiming they got access to my phone and laptop cameras.
I played with the thought of sending them a dick pic and tell them to suck it, but I also did not want to confirm the email validity.

Again it shows, blackmail only works if you let it happen.

[Broomstick]

Oh, I got one similar to that about two weeks ago. I laughed my ass off.

1) my computers either don't have cameras hooked up, or the lens is physically covered unless I am using it at the moment (electrical tape works nicely for that).

2) I don't think I've visited a "porn site" in decades, not since last century at least.

3) I don't give a fuck if people know I have sexual desires/masturbate/have sex. FFS I'm over fifty and was married for 30 years, OF COURSE I've had sex and it's not something I'm ashamed of.

4) My tastes are so damn vanilla most people would find what little smut I have to be boring.

5) I keep very, very little contact information on any of my machines.

6) Yeah, right - I pay this guy off (never!) and he "destroys" the info. Sure.... and I have ocean-front property to sell you in Wyoming.

Bogus bogus bogus. But hilarious if you're me.

[Lord Revan]

Sure it works if you a) have camera hooked to your device your browse porn with b)have an attitude towards sex similar to most people living in saudi arabia.

for me it doesn't really matter, hell I more or less openly bi, granted I'm very private about my sex life (or lack of it) so must people wouldn't know this, but if some pointed out I watch gay porn I'd "no duh" since while I don't announce my sexuality, I don't actively hide it either.

These kinds of threats really only work on people ashamed of their sexuality.

[Korto]

It would of course be very embarrassing for most people to have material like that sent to your parents, children, work-mates, etc. You may even be able to come up with situations where it could be damaging (religious boss, going for custody--OK, custody shouldn't matter, but if you had a prudish judge?)

For that matter, imagine a young woman as the victim. It would be very distressing, particularly if it got out on the public net, and even if it didn't, she could never be sure someone didn't keep a copy.

Not that any of this matters, since it was a bullshit claim anyway.

[The Romulan Republic]

I have never been subject to blackmail, but I hope that if I was, I would have the guts not to give them anything. Because when you give into blackmail, then they own you. There is nothing to stop them making more demands, if they know you'll cave in. Same principle as "don't negotiate with terrorists"- concessions just encourage more demands.

Blackmailers are a special kind of scum, in my opinion.

[aerius]

This is a well known scam. What's actually happening is the blackmailers have harvested a whole bunch of emails from online forums, websites, and other sources, then they spammed out the blackmail threats.

Thanks to "The Fappening" and other high profile nudie hacks, a lot of people will actually be fooled into paying the demands.

[LaCroix]

Complying with blackmail is a strange thing. Completely alogical.

To fall for it, you would have to trust a person who is threatening you to destroy their means to pressure you into compliance once you have met their demands...
And once you complied, they know that you actually can be bent to their will and most likely will use it again and again...
Unless they are honest people.
In which case they would not have tried to blackmail you.

So complying with it should never be an option.

[Korto]

Maybe. I have heard though that the computer-hostage guys are pretty reliable, and will release your computer if you pay.
Which make good business sense. If word gets around that they won't, then no one will pay, and it'll kill the industry.

Mind you, my important stuff I would really cry to lose, is backed up in two separate locations. As long as I keep the back-ups up to date.

[Korto]

And now I'm apparently getting a court summons over email.
Subject heading: "Summons to appear at the court hearing or trial in a legal court action"
Sender: "Pinta4737" at "3coffeebeansjerseycity.com"

Yeah, seems legit. I'm sure summons are delivered by email, from websites that don't seem to actually exist. (I googled it. There is a place called "3 coffee beans in Jersey, but that's not their website.)

What's the best thing for me to do with this? Just delete it? It doesn't seem to have any attachments, so I could have the energy to fuck around with them over email, as long as there's no risk to my computer.

[Jub]

And now I'm apparently getting a court summons over email.
Subject heading: "Summons to appear at the court hearing or trial in a legal court action"
Sender: "Pinta4737" at "3coffeebeansjerseycity.com"

Yeah, seems legit. I'm sure summons are delivered by email, from websites that don't seem to actually exist. (I googled it. There is a place called "3 coffee beans in Jersey, but that's not their website.)

What's the best thing for me to do with this? Just delete it? It doesn't seem to have any attachments, so I could have the energy to fuck around with them over email, as long as there's no risk to my computer.

Set a proper spam filter and don't even open any emails that end up in there. Gmail's filter is pretty good, I'm not sure what you're using but these messages should never even make your inbox if your email provider is any good.

[bilateralrope]

I say have some fun with them. Try to see how far you can keep baiting them along as the more time they spend on you, the less they spend on people who will fall for it. Though you might have difficulty replying to an email from a website that doesn't appear to exist.

[Solauren]

ignore all spam and blackmail emails.

The second you email back, you've confirmed a working email they can hack, and get a contact list off of.

From there, they can pretend to be you, and bother your friends and family.

Simple as that.

[Broomstick]

Got another slew of these recently, judging by the spelling errors all from the same source. This one featured a reveal of my e-mail's password.... except I've never used any of those shown passwords. Sure, that's convincing...

[Lord Revan]

Got another slew of these recently, judging by the spelling errors all from the same source. This one featured a reveal of my e-mail's password.... except I've never used any of those shown passwords. Sure, that's convincing...

I'm guessing they're assuming people use something like "my date of birth" or similar in their passwords, thus creating a password that's easy to guess based on info that's publically avaible for most of us.

I suspect these people are trying to target people who are ignorant of basic methods of securing your PC or just too arrogant to use those as they belive that information theft is something that happens to "other people".

[LaCroix]

Indeed - along time of "people who have no idea how secutiry works" bing in charge of enforcing password security has lead to people using unsafe passwords. Usually a word, with one letter replaced with an special character (usually a "!" instead of an "i" or a "$" instead of an "s") and then, a counter that is incremented by one every time we are forced to change our password. Or we get a generated one, which often, people need to write them down somewhere in order to not forget them...

So we have passwords like "Legola$124", or "h$5zd!Ghr" which are pretty easily cracked, even with a brut force attempt, while people should use passwords like:
"My #1 pet was a griffin named Ursula the 2nd that lived around Mt Saint Helen"

This is pretty much impossible to guess, very hard to crack, and you already have remembered it...

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Maybe. I have heard though that the computer-hostage guys are pretty reliable, and will release your computer if you pay. Which make good business sense. If word gets around that they won't, then no one will pay, and it'll kill the industry.

Sounds like a good enough reason to put out word saying exactly that and see if it does.

[bilateralrope]

The second you email back, you've confirmed a working email they can hack, and get a contact list off of.

Hacking a persons email account with only knowing their address. That's a new one. Please provide proof that this is a regular occurrence.

we have passwords like "Legola$124", or "h$5zd!Ghr" which are pretty easily cracked, even with a brut force attempt,

How fast can they brute force a webserver ?
Having a webserver set to wait half a second before it even starts checking the password seems simple, and would limit any brute force attempts to less than 2 passwords per second.

Ok, that won't work if the attacker tries multiple passwords simultaneously. But detecting simultaneous login attempts and only checking those attempts one at a time (with a delay between each check) doesn't seem too hard.

[Borgholio]

I've received dozens of these things, and some of them actually had a portion of real passwords that I used in the past. I say a portion because they didn't have the full password, just the first half, or the middle, or something like that. These were old passwords that may have been obtained in a hack on Facebook or some other website in the past. But since I've changed my passwords many times in the interm, and since they don't even have the full password (likely due to corrupt or incomplete data), I am not worried.

[Broomstick]

Yeah, I had one with a partial password I've used, but it's a password I've used as a "throw-away", on a site I don't intend to revisit, or that I doubt any damage can be done if it is breached. The really important stuff they've never gotten close to.

[Solauren]

The second you email back, you've confirmed a working email they can hack, and get a contact list off of.

Hacking a persons email account with only knowing their address. That's a new one. Please provide proof that this is a regular occurrence.

Obviously, it's not an instantaneous, or always successful.

However, all it takes is one phishing scam to look real enough someone clicks on it...

[Korto]

Thanks for the advice. I ended up just deleting the stupid thing. I probably wouldn't have had the energy to keep up any fake-replying anyway.

These things stand out to me, because I don't usually get them. I think I've had a lot of "security through obscurity", as my address is one supplied by a small-time ISP. In comparison, my wife uses Yahoo, and gets heaps of spam all the time.

That obscurity might be wearing off, though. What does anyone think of "Spamihilator" for a spam filter?

[SpottedKitty]

I recently received a third one of these things in the last year or so. They're amusing, in a grimly demented sort of way. I'm not sure it's even worth the effort to put the From: address in your spam filter, it's very unlikely whatever spoofing system is used will re-use that particular fake address. Delete and ignore, that's what I do.