Earlier this month I got an email that claimed to have photos/videos of me viewing adult sites and threatened that they would mail the photos to all my contacts if I don’t send them $7000. To make the email look authentic and scare me, they also included an old password of mind that they got from one of the many leaks over the past few years. I think this one was from a BBS that I used for a bit around 2000-2005.
The reason I am publishing this email and my critique is to show how full of crap such emails are. Basically if you ever get such emails you should never give them money because then they know that they can frighten you to pay and they will keep putting the pressure on to squeeze more and more money out of you.
On the other hand if you know that someone has managed to get their hands on some incriminating photos (they gave proof or you had sent it to them) and are blackmailing you then you should never give in to the blackmail. Instead reach out to the authorities and file a formal complaint. If you are a kid then talk to your parent and have them raise a complaint. Never ever give more photos/videos to the sick person blackmailing you because that just gives them more ammo to blackmail you.
Here are some links to sites that can help guide you:
UK National Crime Agency
Interpol Sextortion
FBI Sextortion
So lets get started, I am going to take apart the email I got to show you how useless and full of it the email is..
I know ***** is your password. Lets get directly to purpose. You do not know me and you are probably thinking why you are getting this email? None has compensated me to check you.
Umm ok… That’s an old password that I haven’t used in over a decade and even then it was used for throwaway logins that I didn’t really care about. It did catch my eye, good job adding it to the subject to catch my attention. Yes, no one compensated you initially but you sure want to get compensated now.
Well, I installed a malware on the adult video clips (adult porn) web site and guess what, you visited this web site to experience fun (you know what I mean). When you were watching video clips, your web browser started out operating as a RDP that has a keylogger which provided me accessibility to your display screen and also web camera. after that, my software collected your complete contacts from your Messenger, FB, as well as email. After that I created a double-screen video. 1st part shows the video you were viewing (you have a fine taste hahah), and second part displays the view of your webcam, and its you.
Wow! You must teach me how you did this. How did you manage to get a browser to act as an RDP, especially on a Linux machine that doesn’t even support the protocol natively? Please sensei, teach me 🙂
Actually the even more amazing trick is how you managed to activate a webcam on my computer as I don’t have any camera’s connected to it. 🙂 Did you hack the display to turn it into a camera? Or did you send nanobots via the wire to reprogram/repurpose one of the parts on my desktop to convert it into a camera?
You got two different choices. Let us understand each of these options in aspects:
1st choice is to disregard this email. In this case, I am going to send your actual video clip to almost all of your contacts and just consider about the humiliation you feel. And consequently in case you are in an important relationship, how it will affect?
Now comes the threat… how are you going to send a video that I just proved can’t exist?
Latter solution is to give me $7000. We are going to think of it as a donation. As a result, I will without delay delete your video footage. You will go forward daily life like this never happened and you would never hear back again from me.
You will make the payment via Bitcoin (if you don’t know this, search “how to buy bitcoin” in Google search engine).
BTC Address to send to: 1FwvWtFdGBRvoiCa8BQdzqpu5QoiCSRFMa
[CASE SENSITIVE, copy & paste it]
Holy S**T! You really expect people to pay you $7000 for an email that offers no proof of this supposed video that you managed to magically capture? Lets check if anyone was stupid enough to fall for this nonsense. We can use bitref.com to check the balance of any bit coin address and here’s what the current balance is for this address: $0.0. Yup you have received a big fat 0 for your trouble. In fact I would suggest you sell your software/tech to the NSA/MI5 or other spy agencies around the world and you will get a much better payday.
The money this idiot made from this scam so far.
If you may be thinking of going to the cop, good, this email message cannot be traced back to me. I have covered my moves. I am just not trying to charge you so much, I just like to be paid for. I have a unique pixel in this email, and right now I know that you have read through this mail. You now have one day to pay. If I do not receive the BitCoins, I will certainly send your video recording to all of your contacts including friends and family, colleagues, and so forth. However, if I do get paid, I will erase the video right away. It’s a non-negotiable offer and thus please do not waste my personal time & yours by responding to this mail. If you really want evidence, reply with Yeah! then I will send out your video recording to your 6 contacts.
I am really quaking in my boots. Its been over 3 weeks since you sent out the email, and I don’t know how many of my contacts have received this magical email. Though if I had to guess I would place the number at 0. Since the entire email is a scam to steal money from unsuspecting fools. I think if the person sending out the email hadn’t been so greedy and asked for $7000 but rather asked for something in the range of a few hundred they might have made some money.
Well this is all for now. Will write more later.
– Suramya