Author: Chris Hoffman / Source: howtogeek.com
Here’s how a CryptoBlackmail scam starts: A criminal contacts you over email or snail mail and insists they have evidence you cheated on your wife, there’s an assassin after you, or there’s a webcam video of you watching pornography.
To make the problem go away, the criminal asks for a few thousand dollars in Bitcoin or another cryptocurrency.
But you should never respond or pay up. All the criminals have are empty threats, and they’re just trying to trick you.What is CryptoBlackmail?
CryptoBlackmail is any sort of threat accompanied by a demand you pay money to a cryptocurrency address. Like traditional blackmail, it’s just a “pay up or we’ll do something bad to you” threat. The difference is that it demands payment in cryptocurrency.
Here are some examples of CryptoBlackmail:
- Physical mail saying “I know you cheated on your wife,” and demanding the equivalent of $2000 in Bitcoin sent to an included Bitcoin address.
- Emails saying “I’ve got an order to kill you,” followed by a demand to pay $2800 in Bitcoin to call off the assassination.
- Emails claiming an attacker has placed malware on your computer and recorded you watching pornography along with a video feed from your web camera. The attacker also claims to have copied your contacts, and threatens to send the video to them unless you pay $1900 in Bitcoin.
- Emails including a
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Bear in mind that the criminals almost certainly can’t follow through on their threat, and they probably doesn’t have the information they claim to have. For example, someone may just send letters saying “I know you cheated on your wife” to a large number of people, knowing that, statistically, many of them have. There almost certainly is not an assassin stalking you, either—especially an assassin who only works for a few thousand dollars! These are all empty threats, and there’s no reason to be scared of them.
Unfortunately, the scammers do trick some people. One scammer made about 2.5 BTC, or $15,500 USD, in the first two days of their scam on July 11 and 12. We know this because Bitcoin transaction records are public, so it’s possible to see how much money was sent to the scammer’s wallet address.
Don’t Negotiate or Pay. Don’t Even Respond.
Here’s the most important thing to know: This is not a personally targeted attack. The inclusion of one of your passwords from a breached database may make the threat seem personal, but it isn’t. They’ve just hoovered up your email address and password from a database. Criminals send large numbers of these emails (and even some physical letters,) hoping that just 1% of people will respond and pay up.
This is just like spam emails or tech support scammer phone calls. The criminals know most people won’t fall for their tricks, and they’ll quickly move on to find an easier mark if you aren’t falling for the scam.
Do not negotiate with the criminals, and definitely don’t pay anything. If you receive an email threat like this—especially if it’s an assassination threat!—you might want to report it to the police.
You should…
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