password hack
 

I received a threatening email yesterday using my gmail address and an old throwaway password. They demanded a thousand dollars in bitcoin with what I presume is a bitcoin account. I'm curious as to what agency I could report this to, assuming anybody even cares.

According to the swindler/extortionist, they will send a video of me visiting adult sites to all my email contacts. I don't particularly care except for the extortion attempt.

anyway any suggestions or wisecracks will be appreciated!

You could try CISA.gov, part of Homeland Security. Try this link: https://www.us-cert.gov/report

Brilliant plan David!

When they send that email to all your friends, all you have to do is show them this thread and claim you were hacked. They'll never catch on.

Brilliant.

I'm a subtle son of a gun!

also reported to bitcoin abuse.com (this shows 4 attempts with 0 payments-kinda sad really:sciencefail:)

Ignore it

PM me all your details and I'll investigate it

This. The regulators/cops/whoever might care but they also have about a billion examples - it's a common scam. As you guessed, the scammers buy old compromised databases (Yahoo, Target, there are dozens) and made up the part about the keylogger/webcam/porn/whatever.

Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk

Consider yourself fortunate. The one my wife got several months back was a death threat.

Ignore. Better if you don't even open these emails if possible. They can track when messages are opened. No need to encourage them. Run internet security scans just to be thorough.

You can report it if you'd like. The government tracks these, in terms of aggregates for type of scam, and where it originated.

Oh, and that's not the only password of yours hanging out there which can be associated with your email address. It's a huge hassle to change your passwords; do it anyway. You may not think that the abandoned account you have on that moribund site can come back and bite you on the ass. You might be right. You might not be.

This spam making the rounds again? Gawd, I had SO MANY CALLS about these emails a couple years back - "No, Sue, no one's trying to blackmail you... Sue, do you go to porn sites? No? Do you have a webcam? No? Then don't worry about it."