Bitcoin Sextortion: Most Potent Blackmail Scam!
What is Bitcoin sextortion? As Bitcoin’s price is increasing massively over the last few years, millions of people worldwide have received sextortion scam emails asking for bitcoins.
The number of people targeted by such sextortion emails is rapidly increasing day by day. But still, people are not aware of what is Bitcoin sextortion and how it affects them.
That’s why people are not serious about its after-effects. According to a study by a British Security company, millions of people are receiving sextortion emails in a week.
The study says that “In fact, the number was probably more like tens or even hundreds of millions. The scams exploited global botnets on compromised PCs to dispatch millions of spam emails to recipients around the world.”
About Bitcoin Sextortion
Overall extortion by mail is growing significantly. In 2018, the rate of complaints against those crimes rose to 242%. That is, around 51,146 crimes were reported in just one year. It brought a total loss of $83 million in the crypto field.
The spammers or hackers who send sextortion emails try to extort money through cryptocurrencies. So what actually is sextortion and what are its after-effects?
Those targeted by the malware, which claims the victim’s computer has been hacked when it has not, receive an email claiming to have recorded pornography viewing on the device and threatening to release the recordings unless a ransom is paid in bitcoin.
Actually, this is the practice of sextortion. Vietnam, Brazil, Argentina, the Republic of Korea, India, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Colombia, and Peru are the top countries that compromise the PCs to dispatch spam emails to the recipients.
FBI found that the victims will receive an email threatening to send a pornographic video of them or other compromising information to family or friends if a ransom was not paid.
What to do if you receive a sextortion email?
Here are some of the points that you should consider while reacting to a sextortion email.
- Firstly, don’t panic by reading the subject line that contains your real password. This is an attempt on the part of scammers to establish authenticity.
- They actually play with the power of shame. Don’t fall into it if you believe that hackers know every aspect of your life and maybe they even know your life better than you. But don’t pay for them.
- Realize that these scam emails and sextortion emails don’t have any basis in reality.
- Hackers don’t need any hacking skills or technical knowledge to pull off sextortion emails. They just push emails to the leaked email addresses.
- They buy “dirt cheap” passwords associated with those leaked emails and add them in the subject line. They also include that they have used the password to access your sensitive information.
- If you are worried about such scam emails, then disable or cover the webcam of your PC.
