Internet fraudsters always thinking up new scams
Variations on e-mail and telephone scams keep coming our way.
A sextortion scam made the rounds with a few people I know recently.
I got it too, sent to me by Thatcher Tolstoy – I’m pretty confident it’s a nom de plume – who put his creative writing skills to work trying to blackmail me out of $3,000.
Most of the time I react to these the way most people do; laugh and delete, but in this case Thatcher had one of my old passwords, which he shared in a ransom note, speckled with spelling and grammatical errors.
“I am well aware [my old password] one of your password. Lets get directly to the purpose. You may not know me and you’re most likely wondering why you’re getting this mail? Not one person has compensated me to investigate you.
Let me tell you, I set up a malware on the xxx streaming (sex sites) website and guess what, you visited this site to experience fun (you know what I mean). When you were watching video clips, your web browser started out operating as a Remote Desktop having a key logger which provided me accessibility to your display screen and web camera. after that, my software program collected all of your contacts from your Messenger, social networks, as well as emailaccount. After that I made a double-screen video. First part shows the video you were watching (you’ve got a good taste rofl), and next part shows the recording of your webcam, yeah its u.”
Thatcher went on to explain that if I didn’t pay him the money through a bitcoin account within 24 hours he would send aforementioned alleged video to all my e-mail contacts and destroy my life.
Being a reporter means I don’t have $3,000 in hush money – Thatcher likes to call it a “donation” – floating around, so it looked like I might have to just suck it up, grow a porn star moustache for my online cinematic debut and beg forgiveness from my wife. He had my old password, after all.
We media types don’t panic all that easily, though, and anyway it occurred to me I couldn’t think of anything I’d browsed anyone might get too worked up about, so I flipped Thatcher’s e-mail to the RCMP – something else Thatcher warned me not to do – and the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, so at least they have the information on file.
Joking aside, plenty of people of all ages fall victim to these criminals, sometimes losing tens of thousands of dollars in life savings.
On a whim I Googled “Thatcher Tolstoy” to see what came up.
The search led me to Have I Been Pwned?, a website where users can type in their e-mail addresses to find out how many times their personal information has been compromised by data breaches. Mine turned up four data breaches with Adobe, LinkedIn and two “combo lists” of e-mail addresses and passwords, usually about 10 years old, Thatcher likely got hold of.
There are tips online for generating new secure passwords, but the strongest recommendation to maintain personal cybersecurity is to simply change your passwords regularly to stay a step ahead of guys like Thatcher Tolstoy.
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