October 4, 2018 – There is a relatively new scam going around on email which we have been receiving a lot of call/emails about. We thought it prudent to address this type of scam here on our site. The scams are a type of blackmail and they are happening because of the many data breaches of different companies you may have heard about in the news (for example, Target, Equifax, Yahoo!, and others). The other contributing factor is that many people use the same password information across a lot of sites. The scammers will send an email where for “proof” that they have hacked into your system, they give you an example password. This is a password garnered from one of the aforementioned data breaches. They then try to blackmail you into sending money so that they don’t destroy your system or publish embarrassing information about you.
Here is a common example:
–BEGIN
Hello! I’m a member of an international hacker group.
As you could probably have guessed, your account <your email addres> was hacked, because I sent message you from it.
Now I have access to you accounts! For example, your password for <your email address> is <password you may have used>
Within a period from July 7, 2018 to September 23, 2018, you were infected by the virus we’ve created, through an adult website you’ve visited. So far, we have access to your messages, social media accounts, and messengers. Moreover, we’ve gotten full damps of these data
. We are aware of your little and big secrets…yeah, you do have them. We saw and recorded your doings on porn websites. Your tastes are so weird, you know..
But the key thing is that sometimes we recorded you with your webcam, syncing the recordings with what you watched! I think you are not interested show this video to your friends, relatives, and your intimate one…
Transfer $800 to our Bitcoin wallet: 1HWnuWz77oXgb4LVBfB9fQAAgLqJJS7m7T If you don’t know about Bitcoin please input in Google “buy BTC”. It’s really easy.
I guarantee that after that, we’ll erase all your “data” 🙂
A timer will start once you read this message. You have 48 hours to pay the above-mentioned amount.
Your data will be erased once the money are transferred.
If they are not, all your messages and videos recorded will be automatically sent to all your contacts found on your devices at the moment of infection.
You should always think about your security.
We hope this case will teach you to keep secrets.
Take care of yourself.
–END
Understand that these are scams. The data from the data breaches has been published and is available on the web. This is a relatively easy way for scammers to extract money from you without have to have any real technical knowledge. It is just a trick, but it DOES highlight the importance of not reusing passwords.
We hope this helps. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns regarding a scam like this. Contact us at 256-547-6817 or support@internetpro.net.