I received email from myself asking for bitcoin
A lot of users across the globe have been receiving emails with their password in it. The email would look something like this:
The email starts off typically like this:
- Mocking you by stating that you are a victim
- Your password would be placed in the email
- The email address would be from your own email ID and would state that there is no point trying to reply to the email
- The most interesting or scary part is when they start saying that it has captured your video through you webcam or mobile cam while you were mas******ng.
- Tracked your activities on pornography website and will be shared with your friends. They would claim that your contacts have been extracted when the malware from the porn website that you visited got into your mobile phone
- “You have cheated your wife.” Personal messages or photos sent from your mobile have been taken. They will be sent to all the contacts.
- The most important aspect of all these emails is that they know when the email has been opened and twenty-four hours from that point, they will be able to send those photos or videos to your contacts. They will threaten you and ask for bitcoins.
- Welcome to the world of Cryptoblackmail. We use many unsecure websites where we enter email IDs and sometimes send out password using our email ID. Most of these data gets stored in the dark web
What should you do when you get an email from your own email ID asking for bitcoin?
- Don’t panic. Just ignore the email
- If you are curious about what this is all about, you could continue to read our blog.
A lot of your passwords got stored in darkweb when Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, Netflix, Amazon accounts were hacked few years back. Most of these data are stored and sold in the darkweb. For eg: 5000 credit card details at $ 500 or 100 email passwords at $10. The moment you receive an email like the one above with your password in it or the pattern, you feel the panic. To check if your password has been compromised, check here.
The bitcoin number mentioned in your email can be checked against the link below. Enter bitcoin number that you had received over email after removing the words <bitcoin number> between the angle bracket. https://www.blockchain.com/en/btc/address/<bitcoin number>
All bitcoin transactions are available in public. You will be able to see all their recent transactions in the link. You will be able to view the number of traps that they were able to succeed.
Can you do anything about it?
- No, the best thing to do would be to ignore this email.
- Educate your friends as well about such email. Don’t hesitate as they could fall a prey to such a scam.
- Change your passwords often. Avoid following a pattern
- You will not be able to track the sender. So if you have read this blog, you don’t have to spend more time on researching if your photos/ videos will be shared to your friend
- Don’t keep your webcams on.
- If you thought incognito could help you, you have got it wrong. The best thing would be avoid going to porn websites
Above all, whatever you have done is not unique to yourself. Your body has certain biological requirements and your just followed it. Know your limits.
You have to understand more about Darkweb to understand what happens in the hackers world. The world where your personal information is sold at a cost.
