Business Insider Reports on New Email Scam Effecting Porn Users

People are Being Victimized By a Terrifying New Email Scam Where Attackers Claim They Stole Your Password and Hacked Your Webcam While You Were Watching Porn — Here's How to Protect Yourself (Business Insider)

Read the full article by Kif Leswig at BusinessInsider.com

There's a new scam going around that would terrify most people if it ever landed in their inbox.

The emails are slightly different depending on who's being attacked, but they all have a few similar features:

• The subject line includes a password that you probably have used at some point.

• The sender says they have used that password to hack your computer, install malware, and record video of you through your webcam.

• They say they will reveal your adult-website habits and send video of you to your contacts unless you send them bitcoin, usually $1,200 or $1,600 worth.

Ian Kar , a New York-based product manager who was sent the scammy email, said that after he received this threat, he spent an entire day changing all his passwords and buying 1Password, a password manager.

He said he was pretty sure his password was included in one of the big leaks in the past few years — databases have been stolen from LinkedIn, Yahoo, and eBay, for example. You can check whether your password is in one of these leaked databases over at the website Have I Been Pwned .

Basically, the attackers don't actually have video of you or access to your contacts, and they haven't been able to install malicious code on your computer. In reality, they're taking a password from a database that's available online, sending it to you, and hoping you're scared enough to believe their story and send them bitcoin.

Some scammers have even made over $50,000 from the blackmail scheme, based on an analysis of bitcoin wallets, Bleeping Computer reported . 

Kif is a reporter at Business Insider covering Apple and the technology industry.