Lawrence Abrams reports:
Since 2018, a constant stream of extortion email scams have been targeting users with fake threats designed to scare you into sending a payment in bitcoins to avoid an embarrassing leak or threat of legal action.
These extortion emails are being sent through large spam botnets or through smaller campaigns undertaken by lone attackers.While more people have become aware of these attacks, the amount of extortion emails being sent out continues to trend upward as attackers continue to create new variants.
According to a new report by Symantec, between January 1st and May 29th, 2019 they have blocked approximately 289 million extension emails from reaching their clients.
Read more on BleepingComputer. Abrams includes recent examples of threats to ruin a site’s reputation and emails claiming to be from U.S. state police alleging that the recipient has been involved in child pornography, and the “police” will remove the evidence for $2,000 in BTC. I haven’t received any of these two types of extortion demands yet, but they’ll undoubtedly get around to me sooner or later.
Read the article and then use the examples to warn family members — especially those who might be gullible or naive about extortion scams — not to fall for them.