“Sextortion” Scams on the Rise

As data leaks continue to happen, a new scam has become increasingly popular over the last few months. The scam, dubbed “Sextortion”, involves individuals receiving shady emails from anonymous individuals claiming to have proof of them engaging in pornographic and other illicit sexual activities. To add credibility to their claims, the scammers will spoof the victim’s own email address and reveal a password that the victim has used.

The scammers obtain this information from the numerous data leaks that have occurred in the past and send these emails out in mass. Their goal is financial seeing as how they demand money from the victims. Thankfully these threats tend to be empty since the “proof” that they claim to have does not exist and the “hacked” account is a spoof.

We recently ran into this issue with one our clients. Due to the nature of the client’s work, we took the threats seriously and made every effort to assist them in changing their passwords and securing their devices. Thankfully their accounts had not yet been compromised but the incident served as a reminder of the importance of securing your devices and using strong and unique passwords for all accounts.