What to do if you get one of the sextortion emails?
In recent weeks have seen a rise in the number of people receiving threatening, extortion email messages. The number of sextortion emails has increased dramatically since at least 2011. These emails claim that unless you pay them money within 24 hours your sensitive information will be released to others. It’s a common belief that malware will capture photos of you through your webcam, but there are other variants on the same theme.
Should i ignore sextortion email when i feel ashamed
While there are many different examples of people becoming real sextortion victim, especially with nude photos or videos being stolen from accounts, most often there’s no way this could be true, so don’t respond to it.
They’re sent as form letters so you’ll never know who is behind them. It is alarming to receive emails from people who claim they have compromising videos of you.
We all know how important it is to protect our personal information.
The best way to avoid this from happening is by taking these 5 steps:
Step 1: Change your password
Make sure to change your password on any account that uses the same one as provided. In addition, it should be a strong and unique set of characters for each site so no thief can get in with ease!
Step 2: Check your privacy settings
Privacy is important, so make sure you check your privacy settings on social media regularly and keep them up-to date.
Step 3: Turns off the camera
Turn off your webcam when you’re not using it.
Step 4: Keep evidence
Try to keep records of any incident by taking photos and screenshots, so you can later prove what happened.
Step 5: Scam reporting
How to deal with sextortion? If you have received a suspicious message, consider whether it could be legitimate. Scam reporting will always help with these types of situations so please feel free to contact us if necessary.
What you can do?
Sextortion emails are a huge problem, and the best way to deal with them is by deleting everything on sight. Don’t open it or reply back in any way – just delete it. Don’t open the email, don’t reply back, or even don’t open the attached documents.
The scammer knows they’ve hit a live, working email address when you open an invoice or price list from them because it includes these transparent single-pixel images called beacons. The sender uses this to fetch tiny image files that are stored on remote servers so their location can later be mailed back with tracking information inside of your inbox.
You should not send any money to this person and you need to report them immediately.
