I often check my Junk emails, just in case a legitimate email diverts itself too my Junk box.
I have for the first time received a Blackmail email requesting bitcoin be paid in order for my files, photos, bank details and passwords ect ect not to be compromised??? It also suggests the camera on my Apple Mac has been remotely accessed.
I have obviously not clicked on any links in the email and have deleted it, but it is certainly unnerving…
Has any one else had this unpleasant experience and is their anyway of reporting these emails?
The most immediately concerning one I received appeared to come from my own email address - my concern was not their threatened blackmail, there being nothing to blackmail me with, but that if they could send from what appeared to be my email address had they actually hacked it. Some digging into the email routing showed they hadn’t, so I just deleted.
But if they can send appearing to be from me, they could always send anything to anyone with me appearing to be the source, which is concerning.
You should just ignore and delete all these things. As soon as you show any interest, you become a proper target.
It’s not difficult to spoof the sender of an email, but again as soon as you show any concern, you are worth spending more effort on. If you can still access your email ok, then you can forget about the nonsense.
It’s certainly disconcerting to have to start investigating if one has actually been hacked or not?
Interestingly I have just googled information on blackmail emails… it does actually suggest covering the camera on your computer as these are apparently easy to hack into…
My Computer is on the desk in my office, so nothing to see really apart from me sat in the office chair but it does make you wonder …
I watched a program on home security recently and again it suggested the security cameras we all use these days are easily hacked into…
I have received some funny emails like that, I just annoyed and ignored those.
Is there any tool or legal body that can find the naughty boys who generate these emails and punish them?
Further research suggests these malicious emails come from the Dark web…a very sinister name in itself…
Peoples details are bought and sold, traded and used for scamming purposes… sometimes a small detail of your personal information is used in order to trick you into thinking these emails have merit…
Apparently these criminals use these methods because people do pay the blackmailers demands…
Yes: if what they describe fits, then they have a target who might be worried enough to believe the claimed hack. But surely then to pay up simply marks the person as a source of permanent income, so if that were to apply to anyone (blackmailing by any mechanism, not just online surely an initial denial and demand to see what they think they have as “evdience”. If there was some genuine snapshot or whatever, they would then show it because they would see that as certain money.
But all I have heard suggests that even if someone is “guilty” the best thing to do is ignore because the chances are very much that it is just a scam that happens to have found someone fitting the description. (If they really have evidence they are extremely unlikely to publish and lose their chance of a payout, so would come back with a higher demand and a snippet of the evidence.)
We get lots of them, once I even got one from my own email address (makes it hard to block). Best advice is do not open asap and delete them, whatever you do never reply.
Unfortunately you hear so many stories of people having their computers attacked with a virus…
often through no fault of their own other then opening an email that is a perfect replica of a genuine website…the criminals seem to be upping their game somewhat
Likewise - the dreadful English and preposterous claims of having clandestinely obtained video footage of me ‘relaxing in a gentleman’s way’ (my words, not theirs) meant that, once I’d stopped laughing, I deleted it without a second thought.
I have inspected the headers of these and forwarded them to the ‘abuse@’ (or ‘postmaster@’) email address at the (legitimate) originating servers - a couple of times the owners of the servers have replied thanking me and telling me that they had permanently disabled all the offender’s accounts.
