Beware of extortion scam stating they have hacked your webcam and they will release it on adult websites.
Reports are coming in regarding a new extortion scam where scammers email you stating they have hacked into your computer webcam and have a screen recording of you that they will release on adult video websites unless you pay them $2900 in bitcoin within a day.
The email often will contain some of the following wording:
“It seems that, xxxxxxxxxx is your password. You may not know me and you are probably wondering…
… I set up malware on the adult vids (porno) web-site and guess what, you visited this site…
I created a double-screen video. 1st part shows the video…
Well, in my opinion, $2900 is a fair price for our little secret. You’ll make payments by Bitcoin.”
What makes this scam effective is that they tell you one of your passwords, that they have obtained from an internet data breach. Since most people tend to use the same password or variations of it for all of their accounts, it makes this threat feel real and rightly scares people.
You should be afraid, but not by the threat of the video release. That is most likely a hollow threat. The real thing to worry about is your passwords. Some account of yours has been part of a company’s data breach and your info was sold or leaked. And if like many people, you use the same password many of your accounts, you can see the potential problem here.
The first thing to do right away is to change ALL of your online passwords. We strongly urge you to use unique and complex passwords for all of your accounts. we highly recommend using a password management program like 1Password. Please contact us and we can help you set up a system that will make your life much easier by eliminating the password fatigue and the worry of cyber threats.