- Nov 3, 2019
- 413
xtortion scammers are now also attempting to capitalize on the COVID-19 pandemic by threatening their victims to infect their family with the SARS-CoV-2 virus besides revealing all their "dirty secrets".
If you have received such an email, it is important to know that this is just a scam and that no hacker has stolen your passwords or can infect you or your family with an actual real-life virus.
Just paying attention to their threats should be reason enough to discard their attempts at extortion and delete such emails immediately.
Sextortion emails were first seen in July 2018 when crooks started emailing potential victims and claiming that they have them recorded on video while they were browsing adult sites.
To increase their scam's credibility, the scammers also include the victims' passwords in some cases, leaked together with their email addresses as part of a previous data breach.
Coronavirus infection threats over email
The sextortion emails' subjects are in the "[YOUR NAME] : [YOUR PASSWORD]" form, presenting one of your passwords from the get-go as a proven tactic to catch the targets' attention and make them open the messages.
Next, the scammers attempt to send their victims into full panic mode by warning them that they know where they live, as well as "every dirty little secret" in their lives that will be exposed if $4,000 worth of bitcoins will not be paid within 24 hours.
These threats are also supplemented with the promise of infecting the target's entire family with the coronavirus as researchers at Sophos found.
Unfortunately for them, this is the part that absolutely ruins all their previous work at intimidating the victim given the laughable attempt to use a real-life coronavirus infection scare to incentivize their victims to pay a ransom over email.
"You hαve 24 hours τo maκe the ραyment. Ι hαve a unique pιxel withιn τhis email messαge, and rιght now, I κηοw thατ yοu hαve reαd thιs email," the crooks add.
The scammers also attempt to bypass text matching email protection features by using Greek characters instead of Latin ones as seen above.
What's important to remember if you are on the receiving end of an anxiety-inducing campaign is that, despite all their threats, the scammers never gained access to any of your accounts and you have absolutely nothing to worry about.
Additionally, there is no chance in hell that they will ever be able to get close to you or your family; and the chances of their coronavirus infection threats becoming are even slimmer.
Instead of being alarmed by such gratuitous threats, you should go ahead and mark such emails as spam as soon as you receive them to help out your email service to detect them before they land in your inbox and automatically block them in the future
If you have received such an email, it is important to know that this is just a scam and that no hacker has stolen your passwords or can infect you or your family with an actual real-life virus.
Just paying attention to their threats should be reason enough to discard their attempts at extortion and delete such emails immediately.
Sextortion emails were first seen in July 2018 when crooks started emailing potential victims and claiming that they have them recorded on video while they were browsing adult sites.
To increase their scam's credibility, the scammers also include the victims' passwords in some cases, leaked together with their email addresses as part of a previous data breach.
Coronavirus infection threats over email
The sextortion emails' subjects are in the "[YOUR NAME] : [YOUR PASSWORD]" form, presenting one of your passwords from the get-go as a proven tactic to catch the targets' attention and make them open the messages.
Next, the scammers attempt to send their victims into full panic mode by warning them that they know where they live, as well as "every dirty little secret" in their lives that will be exposed if $4,000 worth of bitcoins will not be paid within 24 hours.
These threats are also supplemented with the promise of infecting the target's entire family with the coronavirus as researchers at Sophos found.
Unfortunately for them, this is the part that absolutely ruins all their previous work at intimidating the victim given the laughable attempt to use a real-life coronavirus infection scare to incentivize their victims to pay a ransom over email.
"You hαve 24 hours τo maκe the ραyment. Ι hαve a unique pιxel withιn τhis email messαge, and rιght now, I κηοw thατ yοu hαve reαd thιs email," the crooks add.
The scammers also attempt to bypass text matching email protection features by using Greek characters instead of Latin ones as seen above.
What's important to remember if you are on the receiving end of an anxiety-inducing campaign is that, despite all their threats, the scammers never gained access to any of your accounts and you have absolutely nothing to worry about.
Additionally, there is no chance in hell that they will ever be able to get close to you or your family; and the chances of their coronavirus infection threats becoming are even slimmer.
Instead of being alarmed by such gratuitous threats, you should go ahead and mark such emails as spam as soon as you receive them to help out your email service to detect them before they land in your inbox and automatically block them in the future
