Blackmail emails

It’s worthwhile forwarding them on to the relevant people…

We recently had someone in the family getting in a serious mental crisis because of this. It triggered the bipolar disorder again. Terrible.

Two things I learned:

  • generations approach blackmails differently
  • people having the bipolar disorder often have issues to find the right balanced trust in others and are therefore extra vulnerable to blackmails

My stepson suffers from bipolar… it doesn’t take much to trigger the condition… these type of emails can cause some serious harm…

Pipe and slippers?

G

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Brings to mind this wonderful image (and a great album to boot)…

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Goodness me, how did you obtain that picture of me, Richard? I doubt your having it falls within permitted GDPR guidelines. Stand by to hear from my solicitor.

Mark

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Precisely, there have been suicides over topics like this and Operation Ore where peoples ID were phished then used for despicable purchases online. Delete and ignore.

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Loads of them - and I don’t even have a camera on my PC. Nor have visited the sorts of site that they say they know I do. So ignore.

Not something I do with my albums. Despite any evidence to the contrary from my PC camera.

That may look like an innocent radiogram…It’s watching. Always watching.

G

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They tend to peak in batches. I’d love to know how they unfailingly manage to access my web camera, since I don’t have one.

Latest ones now peaking in my junk box are scammers claiming to be legal representatives for copyright infringement that I have committed on several of my client’s websites. The bad English is always a give away.

I still get a few claiming that I have been left money by strangers. Or won a lottery. Along with warning messages that my email, PayPal account, bank account, Amazon account, etc, etc, have been hacked and I need to reset passwords via a convenient link. Honestly! That’s just so last week man. Try harder.

Time was when I was proud of my elegant and original code. Now the peak of my creativity seems to be in writing inbox rules.

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Unfortunately the scammers are getting better…
what for me is most disturbing is very little seems to be done about it…
I had a fake email from a certain building society I use, I went into the local branch and the staff showed very little interest…

Notify head office rather than branch staff, the branch staff really have little idea what to do with such e-mails.

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Indeed. There is often a specific email address and/or SMS number for a bank to which you can forward suspect emails or texts. I found it easily for my bank by searching on their home page.

Best

David

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To the best of my knowledge, all banks have a team of staff with responsibility for technical security.

(I was a technical contributor to one of these teams, and a adviser / designer for the technology department on security matters, the main system I designed hasn’t (yet) been broken in 20+ years!).

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The weakest link is always the email recipient. A service provider or bank or building society will never ask you to reveal passwords, log in details etc. Same goes for junk voice calls. About every other month I get called by someone saying they are O2. Except they don’t know any of my account or plan details apart from my company name and phone number. They depend on catching me off guard.

Anything received by email threatening some kind of disaster can be ignored. Any email asking you to log in to a suspended account via a link provided in the email can be ignored.

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They are usually the result of a site you are registered with (or have registered with in the past) having been hacked and your email address and password is traded on the dark web. The password is often included in the threatening email to convince you that they have bona fide info. All it means is they have your password for some site or other. They almost certainly do not have any further info. The email I received was the result of the hacking of an old music forum I was registered with over ten years ago. Simply ignore and delete. And change your passwords regularly. These emails are sent out in batches of thousands, or hundreds and thousands. If a small percentage of recipients respond then it’s a decent payday for the hackers.

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It is hard for the bank to stop these scams as they are not involved in the chain.

If I sent you an email claiming to be XYZ Bank then XYZ Bank won’t even know it has happened. If in a past life youhad written a cheque that had passed through my hands then I would have many of your bank details to add credibility to the scam.

You have be vigilant against such things. Indeed your software has already done a good job by labelling it as Spam.

It can be useful to inform your bank as making them aware may mean they can warn customers of this scam.

Treat email like you would a postcard in old money. You can never be sure who sent or who read it.

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Although I have to say I received one purporting to be from Paypal a while ago. It was absolutely authentic looking. A true facsimile of the Paypal page, no clumsy grammar or spelling errors, informing me that I had sent £350 to John Smith. As I had done no such thing, I very nearly clicked the link. The only giveaway was the email address it had come from. Other than that it appeared frighteningly genuine.

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If I get emails from paypal or a bank I go directly to their website, rather than the link. If it is genuine you will find out about it, if it is a scam you have dodged it. I NEVER use links in emails for anything.

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