If you receive a threatening, frightening, bullying email demanding you pay the sender an amount in Bitcoin, failure to which would lead to grave consequences, check out these informative articles (found by doing a google search):
- Warning: Darknet Markets Bitcoin mixing tutorial is a phishing scam
- Email Video Scam
- Blackmail Email Scam
If you are still concerned, contact authorities and have your computer scanned for malware as a precaution.
NOTE: Please change your password. If you have your email address listed on your website, spammers have easy access to it. We recommend not posting an email address on your website.
See this FAQ for more info:
Can I display my email address on my site?
Update 07/19/2018
We have heard about another version of the scam which actually includes an email password you would have used in the past.
From our research we determined that this is a known scam that uses old email passwords that were obtained from a data breach at a popular Web site (NOT from FASO!) that happened more than a decade ago.
You can find more info about it here:
Sextortion Scam Uses Recipient’s Hacked Passwords
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from Sextortion Scam Uses Recipient’s Hacked Passwords It is likely that this improved sextortion attempt is at least semi-automated: My guess is that the perpetrator has created some kind of script that draws directly from the usernames and passwords from a given data breach at a popular Web site that happened more than a decade ago, and that every victim who had their password compromised as part of that breach is getting this same email at the address used to sign up at that hacked Web site. I suspect that as this scam gets refined even more, perpetrators will begin using more recent and relevant passwords — and perhaps other personal data that can be found online — to convince people that the hacking threat is real. That’s because there are a number of shady password lookup services online that index billions of usernames (i.e. email addresses) and passwords stolen in some of the biggest data breaches to date. |
If you receive one of these scam emails, make sure you change your password immediately!
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