Cases of ‘sextortion’ involving threats of releasing alleged compromising videos are growing online, warns an official Swiss body. The advice: don’t give in and don’t pay.
Victims receive an email claiming that their webcam has been pirated and that they have been filmed watching or masturbating to pornography; they are then told that the material will be sent to all their email contacts unless a certain sum of bitcoins or francs is handed over.
To make their claims seem more believable, the scammers often include in the mail a password belonging to the victim, a personal telephone number – even the threat of an acid or bomb attack.
The mails are so believable – and perhaps the prospect of shame so strong – that victims are increasingly giving in. According to the security firm SANSExternal link, a single bitcoin account that they discovered had a balance of $22 million extorted from victims across the world.
However, the advice of MELANI is clear: don’t pay. The claims to possess compromising footage are false, it says, and giving in is simply encouraging such scams.
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