email hacked - 'ransom' of $841 in bitcoins !!

[Minitoots]

My son's girlfriend has just received an email with the title being her email address and a message saying it had been hacked. It's a hotmail account and her payslips get sent to it and that's mostly why she's concerned.

The message states her password from the email account (but it is an old one) It says it hacked her mailbox more than 6 months ago and has accessed all her accounts social networks, email and browsing history. It also implies she has been looking at 'intimate content sites' and has taken a screenshot through the camera on her device (she has it covered up on her laptop) and is asking for $841 in bitcoin to be sent to their account.

We've reassured her that it sounds like a con and she's also checked it all out on the police advice website re hacking but it would be good if anyone else can advise her on what to do.

She has a Macbook so any advice on the best anti-hacking software would also be handy.

[alex_b]

Definitely a con, it's really common at the moment. I would suggest she looks at have https://haveibeenpwned.com/ and see if her email address turns up in one of the data breaches they track. That will give her an idea of what might be compromised and need changing.

Macs don't really need endpoint protection (anti-virus) and for Windows machines Defender from Microsoft is fine. What I would suggest is a) use unique passwords for every site b) switch on two-factor authentication on any service where it's available.

[Captain Marvel]

I'd pay up if I were you

[alex_b]

Captain Marvel Wrote:

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> I'd pay up if I were you

Why? This is well known scam and the account in question has rarely been compromised. They harvest a list of old emails/passwords from data breaches like the LinkedIn hack and spam them out hoping to trick people who have been reusing passwords across sites. The "photo"/"screenshot" threat is just to add a bit of peril and get people to pay up.

On the off-chance it were genuine, what's to make you think that paying $841 would stop them doing what they've threatened to do?

My advice: report to it Action Fraud, implement two-factor authentication and move on.

[JohnL]

Captain Marvel Wrote:

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> I'd pay up if I were you

Yes ... in sh*tcoin

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/shitcoin.asp

[TheArtfulDogger]

I get these so many times a day, that if what they say is true ("video evidence of my joy, you know what I mean" -their words not mine) then I would be drowning in my own juices every day ...

It's a scam playing on fears they have actually got access where as all they have done is harvested an email address to use as spoof sender hiding their real email, they don't have access to your account or your password

Artful "up to my neck in juices" Dogger

[Seabag]

I was asked for my Instagram password, username and something else, to check I wasn?t being hacked and deleted, or I?d be deleted in 24 hrs.

If I didn?t do this ?Instagram? who had suddenly gone downmarket with a @gmail.com email address would delete all of my content, as it included ?copyrighted? materials.

Last checked, Instagram still fully functional.

I never respond to any of this crap, you?re one of thousands, they?re not sitting ?waiting? for your particular response