Porn scams quoting your phone number

What’s the threat?

Fraudsters are sending ‘sextortion’ emails attempting to blackmail people by claiming they’ve been secretly filmed watching porn online. To make it more convincing, the emails contain four digits of a phone number that, in some cases, are part of the intended victim’s real number.

The email typically begins (with grammatical errors included): “It seems that, +XX XXXXXXXXXX, is your phone. You may not know me and you are probably wondering why you are getting this e mail, right?”. In the real email, the last four Xs are replaced by genuine numbers of the recipient’s phone.

It claims it gained access to the PC’S webcam by using a keylogger, and has all the contact information of people you know on Facebook and email. If you don’t send $1,000 of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, the blackmailer threatens to “certainly send out your video recording to all of your contacts including relatives, coworkers, and so on”.

After giving you 48 hours to pay up, the email ends: “It is a non-negotiable offer, that being said don’t waste my personal time and yours by responding to this message”.

How can you stay safe?

The email is a scam, so your PC hasn’t been hacked, and none of your online activities have been recorded. But the sender has got hold of part of your phone number, most probably by buying it from other criminals on the dark web. These details were almost definitely stolen by hackers in one of many numerous large-scale attacks. If that’s an unsettling thought, you should consider changing your number.

Be aware also of similar blackmail scams that quote your password in emails to appear credible (see Protect Your Tech, Issue 534).