Considering that I don’t use a laptop, I don’t visit porn sites, and my desktop camera is generally pointed off to the side (I only use the mic occasionally) it’s utter bullshit and I’m not worried. The password mentioned is for something that was closed well over a year ago, and I don’t use that pw at all now. My preference would be to delete and block (though I’m sure it’ll come around again from another IP) but should I notify anyone? FBI? Police? Sheriff? Shit like this pisses me off because there ARE poor fools who WILL be conned, and scammers are the lowest of the low. I’d love to have a minuscule part in cutting them off at the knees.
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It’s a well-known scam by now. I got the same email about three months ago. Since it’s IMHO, all I could say is that I doubt it serves any useful purpose to report it. It’s known; presumably the email addresses it’s sent from change constantly; etc. I get scam emails several times a week, mostly of typical “GOD BLESS YOU! IVE GOT SHITTONS OF MONEY THAT I RANDOMLY PICKED YOU TO HAVE HELP ME ACCESS” 419 type of scam. That’s been around for years, nay decades by now, and shows no sign of stopping, so I’d be really surprised if reporting does any good.
Just toss it. Actually, now that I think of it, reporting it as spam to your email provider may actually help in tweaking their spam filters. Like I see on my gmail I has a “report spam” and “report phishing” link. So if you use one of these email services, I guess it doesn’t hurt to report it.
I got two of these recently. It would be a waste of time to report it to anybody. They are probably outside of the U.S. There is no way they will be able to find them. The email is almost certainly spoofed, and the Bitcoin account is theoretically untraceable.
The ones who are more dangerous are the ones who actually deploy a virus to your machine, encrypt your files, then extort money for the decryption key.
That’s what I thought, but times change, and actually it’s been a while since I’ve gotten even a bankroller email. Guess the filtering kinda works! I’ll add this to the spam/autopurge list.
I get the occasional spam (and sometimes phone calls) about malware attacks on my computer. They always reference windows, but my laptop is a Mac. Just phishing.
The first time I got one of these they said they wanted 7000 in bitcoin. I don’t even have a webcam on this PC. I was just getting ready to go on vacation and took my laptop with me. While I was on WIFI, my laptop suddenly froze up and a little Microsoft Security window came up. I couldn’t do anything. When I got home and booted this PC back up, I got a notification from Microsoft Defender that it blocked ETD_GETSmart.exe from making changes to memory. It definitely was a threat, but I got rid of it. I got another one of these emails from a different address but nothing else ever happened. My laptop has a webcam built in but it quit working after a Microsoft update and I uninstalled it.
I don’t have any trouble with this sort of thing, I just don’t open any emails that are not from someone I know well, usually for years. I have a lot of fun in the morning selecting the emails that are to be immediately deleted. Don’t even look at the subjects.
This is how I handle my telephone calls, too. If I don’t know who you are, you don’t get answered. In fact, there is a little gadget on my telephone system that lets me permanently block any number by pushing, at any time, a big red button. There are hundreds of such numbers on this list now, and the list is growing.
This system has a nice feature. When a call comes in from a blocked number, the phone will ring, but only once. This is a great feeling!
I don’t know what I’ll do if Publisher’s Clearinghouse wants to call me to deliver the news that I’ve won a jillion dollars. Guess that’s a chance I’ll have to take.
I received one of these last week - exactly the same template as I´ve seen others describe, claiming to have hacked my email and have footage of me while I was watching porn.
Odd thing is, the threat email tried to reinforce its message by telling me what my password was - now as far as I understood from others´accounts, this password is usually somewhat accurate. This one wasn´t - and it wasn´t even similar to any passwords I´ve ever used