There's An Sextortion Racket Claiming They Have Video Of You Doing Very Special Grown-Up Activities, And Yes, It's A Scam

So, have you received an email of late containing one of your passwords in the subject line and body text which explains in slightly broken English that your computer has been hacked, you’ve been filmed masturbating to porn and a video of this will be sent to all of your contacts unless you transfer an amount of Bitcoin to the sender?

If so, you’re not alone. It’s doing the rounds at the moment and first, here’s the good news: it’s a scam. They don’t have any video. You’re not going to have to warn your mum.

In fact, according to the good folks at Science Alert, it’s probably just automated – so you’re not even being targeted so much as phished.

Here’s the potentially bad news, aside from that scammers are apparently making an absolute fortune out of this: you’ve definitely had your email address made public in a hack at some point and chances are good that this email and an attached password exists somewhere on the internet.

After all, there have been so many data hacks that any halfway busy digital citizen has almost certainly been compromised at some point.

eBay, LinkedIn, Uber, Sony Playstation Network, Kickstarter, Patreon, and Target and many, many, MANY more sites have undergone massive data hacks, and then there are more targeting ones like the release of all the user data for adult website Ashley Madison.

This is why changing your password is important – and you still don’t do it. We’re not angry, just disappointed.

So first thing to do is check Have I Been Pwned?, which collates all this leaked data and can tell you if (and from where) your email address is linked to a breach.

And when you check there, you’ll find that some site has your email and a password – hopefully one you no longer use – which is where these scammers got that detail that made it seem personal and authentic.

They know that enough people don’t change their passwords very often and so chances are the one they’ve found from a data breach is still one that’s in use. And also that you don’t know enough about computers to know whether having someone’s password is enough to install video-camera-accessing malware.

Anyway: check if you’ve been pwned, change your passwords – and if you’re still worried, whack a bit of tape or blu-tack over the camera, and for god’s sake don’t pay anyone a ransom.

Then you can… you know, do that in peace.