The day starts like any other, you get up, grab a coffee and check your email…
That’s when you see it an email from usually someone you don’t know showing you a password you may have used at some point and claiming they have infected your computer.
The email usually stats something similar to ” I installed a malware on the adult streaming (porn) website and there’s more, you visited this site to have fun (you know what I mean). When you were viewing videos, your internet browser initiated functioning as a remote control desktop having a keylogger which gave me access to your display and also web camera.“
According to RCMP, this is a scam and it has been around for a while.
[jaw_quote author=”Threat from cyber-extortion letter” ]I am going to send out your very own video clip to just about all of your personal contacts and thus just think regarding the disgrace that you receive. Or if you are in a romance, just how it will eventually affect?[/jaw_quote][jaw_clear]
The scam tries to instill fear in the victim by threatening to send a video of the suspect watching porn to their contact list unless they pay a certain amout in Bitcoins to the suspect within a specified amount of time. The letter usually states that once the money is received that the scammer will delete the video.
What is unique to this version of the scam is the real password the scammer puts in the email. Police say that there are many ways the cyber-criminal could have gained access to this password including data breaches from companies or websites you do business with and hacking.
Anti-fraud experts say that it is always a good idea to change your password regularly and if you are still using a password identified in this type of email change it immediately.
There are online resources that are free to use that can check to see if your data has been breached such as haveibeenpwned.com .
Although it can be unsettling to see an email with your password in it from a person who is threatening you and attempting to steal from you police advise you DO NOT PAY!
Report this kind of activity to police and the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre so that they know which scams are targeting our community.
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