Bitcoin Forum

Yesterday I received email from my own email saying that he/she has monitored every keystore and all the information about me is all gathered
he has sent me a Bitcoin address and told me that if I did not send any money in the form of Bitcoin he would expose my data has anyone received this kind of email?
What will you do?

• For me the very first thing that I would do is change my email address password because even though it's not true, we should always update it maybe 2-3 times a month or what you prefer.
• Also do a deep scan of your computer, but we should run daily scans if you really want, since sometimes we attach thumb drives coming from outside or download files, like freeware, which has a load of malware on it.
• Also avoid entertaining emails that say you have won part of BTC and saying you have to click the link,. never ever do that delete that immediately I have received lots of emails like this be careful.

for sure lots of people have been a victim of this, a few years back one of my clients has also been a victim of ransomware, and emails saying they have your data, so be very careful about what you do, and never communicate with them as much as possible.
Who among you also received this kind of scam and tricks what did you do, we could also educate new comers so that they will not fall victim to this kind of scam and hacking.

I've receive that kind of email, but those aren't true, they only use mail spoofing, depending of your email provider it can show you some details like who signed that message, example:

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2023/10/23/TmM1m.png

I receive similar messages but those aren't signed by my email provider, also they show you some leaked password from some site databreak. But if you use a different password for each site you shouldn't worry


In theory that is the best option but if you do that i recomend you to use a password manager that can be sincronized between devices because it can be dificult to track every password that you use.

In my case i use a different password for every single page.

Remember to enable to Second factor authentication for everery site, but avoid 2FA by SMS becasuse it can be vulnerable to SIM swap.

Regards!

You received an email from your own email  ???

Updating, changing your email password too often is not actually good. If you use weak passwork, has a style of using similar password with very small changes between old and new passwords, your updated password is not good to protect your account from hacks.

Use strong password and you don't need to change it like 2 or 3 times a month.

[GUIDE] How to Create a Strong/Secure Password (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5132378.0)
Are your passwords in the green? (https://www.hivesystems.io/blog/are-your-passwords-in-the-green)

Check your email address with Have I been pwned? (https://haveibeenpwned.com/).

It's possible that a computer was compromised by malware, such as keyloggers, which can monitor your typing and potentially access sensitive information. Simply changing your password might not be enough, especially if the attacker already has access to your email or if your computer is still compromised.

To ensure your digital security, the best course of action would be to reformat your computer. This means wiping it clean and reinstalling the operating system. After that, change all your passwords, starting with fresh information. It's also essential to exercise caution when using your computer – avoid installing unnecessary programs and refrain from clicking on unverified links, as these are common sources of malware infections.

That is true, I have not changed my password in some years  ::) ::)

Some persons have fallen into this scam and paid some money to stop these scammers from exposing their confidential information. But they later find out that paying ransom is a grave mistake because they will not stop blackmailing and asking for more money. If one receives such an email,  just do a security check and take necessary protective actions. If it is fake, stop communicating with these criminals. But if it is true that he has some of your information, gather enough evidence and report to the relevant authority. Scammers will become powerless if they know that you are not ready to give them anything.

I wouldn’t recommend the change of password every two to three months because just like you have said you can easily forget it or even mixed them together. You can change passwords at least ones in year depending on your preferences and when changing your passwords do not set aside a day to change passwords to all your accounts in one day or at the same period as this raises suspicions and could make scammers link the accounts together.

Also as some who is into cryptocurrency where security of your passwords are paramount you should avoid anything related to password managers and customized keyboards. Both of them store your passwords and since they are all closed source you don’t know what happens with your passwords stored on them. An hacker that gets access to those password managers app would automatically get access to your account passwords too. Also the use of password managers makes one to rely on them and as such you will forget those passwords and when time comes to recover them either because of device lost or damage you wouldn’t.

Also when using an email for accounts related to anything finance, make sure you separate that email with the ones used for social media accounts and other sites. Emails are easily visible in this two places and could lead an hacker to any of your financial informations on the email.

It has not happened to me before, but it always happens to big companies and the hacker will also encrypt the information with ransomware or show the company the data they got and to pay money.

Do you know that you can use 2FA app with your email? 2FA for better security. This can help you not to be changing the password all the time.

if they really had this information they wouldn't tell you but they would act accordingly.
check on "I am pwned" https://haveibeenpwned.com/ if your address ended up in any of the hacked account databases (and which password they recovered).
ignore all these emails and put them in spam. there is nothing to worry about.

It's called email spoofing where they will try to trick you into believing what you see is real like a header but if you look deeply at your header, it's not your email ill give you an example, your email is john@yahoo.com now if you are not looking closely an email will be sent to you, with this email john.@yahoo.com or johnn@yahoo.com if you're not going to look in the header you will believed it's your email and panic, it means it's a fake sender pretending to be your email.

Hackers sometimes fall into different types of fraud traps and many users sometimes fall into the trap of hackers without understanding the traps of fraudsters. The hacker will try to gain trust from the users before trying to trick them. We have various elderly people in this region who are paid old age allowance by the government. Earlier old age allowance was usually brought to a specific place, but now, thinking about the convenience of people, the government gives old age allowance through mobile banking. Elderly people are usually not very aware of the hackers so they call the mobile banking number of everyone who gets old age allowance and ask them to share various account details. Hackers have blanked the accounts of those who have shared various account information without understanding this fraud of hackers, so we must always be careful of such frauds. Cryptocurrencies are usually the most fraudulent so we must be extremely careful.

I completely agree with you about being cautious when it comes to emails claiming that you have won Bitcoin or other rewards. These are often phishing scams attempting to trick individuals into revealing personal information or clicking on harmful links. Deleting such emails is the right thing to do.

It's unfortunate that many people have fallen victim to these types of scams. Sharing your experiences and education on avoiding scams can indeed be helpful for newcomers and others who may not be familiar with the risks. By raising awareness and promoting safe online practices, we can collectively work towards reducing the number of people affected by these scams.

always be cautious with your personal information online and continually stay informed about potential threats.   

Email spoofing with content saying that they monitored you is a bit scary but changing only your email password is not enough you should also check the email activity what device and IP your email is currently connected and check if there is a recovery email and phone number added in your email you should remove them and keep only email and phone number that you truly own.

I have a friend who fell victim to phishing not from email spoofing even my friend changed his password the hacker was still able to access his email after I checked his email activity and recovery I saw different devices and IPs that the owner did not recognize and added email recovery that is why I suggested him to remove these emails and phone numbers that he don't recognize and add 2FA, after that change the password and disconnect the email to all device.
After he did that the hacker couldn't able to access his email no new unknown IPs and devices were listed on his email activity meaning he successfully got rid of them.

Assuming that this scammer is really holding our data for the sake of discussion. Paying them doesn’t guarantee that they will not expose our identity since there’s no assurance that they will delete our files once they are paid. The hacker should attach your personal info to verify that they are really holding your ID.  ;D

Hacker is now becoming more creative on how to scam user knowing that there’s a lot of leak data incidents happened in crypto space.

I have not yet experienced receiving this kind of email maybe because they haven't found my email add yet (maybe in the future). I could agree that changing passwords from time to time isn't a good idea, unless when have been warned that someone is trying to access my account. But until there is no suspicious activity happening, I think it is not necessary to do that.

because whatever we do, when our email add has already been exposed, the scammer will try to touch us. They won't be successful if we keep silent and never reply to their emails.

Same here never been received that kind of message but still we need to be careful as we all know that hackers are in everywhere and we can't hide them once we fall into thier trap. But the best thing to do to avoid these kind of happenings is we need to secure our account we must not login to public computers which there are many keylogger installed by hackers or by the owners. So it's better to keep in Private and don't change your password every now and then.

I agree with you that if something is wrong and you detected it. You must change your account password and choose a setting to log it out on all other devices. Because it's you change your password, you will have no issue to log in on other devices but hackers who only know your old password will not be able to log in your account again, except if they hack your new password too.

First steps to do to temporary secure your account, avoid further compromise. After that, I will clean my device, install a new OS and change my account password again.

Some people even don't mind to use 2FA for their accounts and it's too late for them to do this after their accounts were hacked.

Thanks to Apple, I am using the "Hide my Mail" feature and it's so good. You never share your actual email with anyone and can also be used at every single website and platform, for throwaway emails., they don't work on all platforms.

If you want to stay safe from mail spoofing, just understand that no one gifts you free money and any email with that written is a total scam at the first place and you shouldn't spend your time clicking on it.

When you see mails like they don't make impulsive moves, such as trying to check out the link to verify If it's true or not, always ignore them and keep your mail as safe as possible, first step to overcoming such is not clicking on any of such links sent to you as that .ay be the only gateway for them to get full access even if you have change your password, they could recover your details and gain access again.

Note that any mail with such threats are fake and fraudulent, because if they do have your details they would have gone ahead to hack your mail and do what ever they want with it, coming to tell you they do so you could send them some money shows they are fake and need access from you to continue their fraudulent activity on your mail, ignore such mails and never click on any link, always make sure to keep your details safe and change them as often as you can, don't logging you Mail on multiple devices especially that which you don't trust well enough.

I prefer to use a separate computer/phone for sensitive data so that I avoid downloading any software on that computer and be careful to only visit sites I trust.

As much as these services are good, there is nothing preventing them from registering your email address and selling it. If there is an open source service, and you can host it self-hosted with an hourly update to the database, then we can guarantee that such services will not be registered or misused.

Yeah, one shouldn't use his main device for such thing. I use sandbox, virtual machine and other software whenever I'm unsure of a link or anything. It separates my main device from any kind of attacks. As a precaution, I use multiple device and always keeping backup of my data in many places. With all that, I doubt I have enough security.

OP, can you share some screenshots of the email you got? So that we can know how it looks like.

It is good to be careful and avoid this type of scams, but can we completely avoid them?
Scammers are always doing more research to create more ways to scam people through emails. I think the best thing to do if you want to be free and have less worries about these type of phishing scams is to avoid sharing any of your sensitive information in your emails, or stop saving anything important related to cryptocurrency in the  email.

We can not permanently avoid scam but it can be done temporarily  because fraudulent activities are everywhere in the market. Though in the modern day, scamming have upgraded their styles and levels, this time they're using phishing mails to grab the attention of people, this type of scamming method is mostly concentrated on traders in the crypto space. We should put an end of saving and receiving unnecessary mails in our message box, taking precautionary measures not to be in a hurry to click any mails sent to us anonymously. Internet fraudsters carry out drastic measures to lure their online victims and they won't stop at any course.

It always becomes a mystery to me how people receive such letters. Secondly, I never check my mail; if I need to use mail, then I don’t read what was sent to me earlier.
Firstly, because my created emails are quite difficult to select by login, I never agree with Google’s proposal (for example) to create a login but come up with it myself, as is the case with my nickname on the forum. It may look wrong, but such logins are quite complicated for sending spam—as are different emails for different things. If the mail is intended for registration in those places that are not important to me, then it is completely unnecessary to read the letters that come to it.
Besides all this, what data about you might be on the Internet? If you post evidence of your documents and photos here and there, you already agree that this data may be available to third parties. What's there to worry about, then? It’s even more ridiculous to pay someone else for something.
There is no need to be naive.

Since scammers are now constantly conducting extensive investigation, it is not the case that people should store their essentials inside emails, since scammers are becoming more and more common in all fields. Again we should refrain from logging into any of our mail accounts on a defference device since occasionally we may use a friend's or brother's phone and log in, and forgetting to log out. Sadly, they have the ability to hack email addresses. As a result, your friend's phone can find up in the hands of someone else.

wow, things are happening hackers are coming up with different techniques everyday just that I haven't gotten this sort of trick on me, and am sure it wouldn't work on me.

I'll just ask you to go ahead and expose the data you claim to have with you. Since they claim to have it what's the assurance that they won't continuously use it in blackmailing me each time they ran out of funds. So the best way is to go tough too by asking them to reveal it that's the only way you'll know if they're bluffing or not. And even if they're not I don't give a fuck. If I pay any ransom today , tomorrow they will sk for more and it won't end there, keeps going on and on. Don't negotiate with thieves, they're greedy people and never satisfied

As for changing of passwords now and then, I feel that's stressful and can get you confusing. I have a strong password and that suffix me stead of jumping from one weak password to another.

For ages now, although I wouldn't consider myself a computer wizard, to protect against such scam mails, there's the need to set up or activate the spam folder or spam section so as one doesn't open such mails unknowingly and fall victim to their cause.

I couldn't agree more with the fact that not replying such mails is the best way to ignore and silence the activities of the scammers and most importantly is to not click on ads or visit sites that don't have good email sources.

Aren't you supposed to research how he gained access to the keystore, or at least encrypt your data in a separate, open source, offline place? It is true that such scammers try to steal your money by claiming that they know data that no one knows but them, but they are liars.
Try as much as possible not to publish your personal email and information publicly.

Also be careful with any keyboard software, it collects a lot of data.

Aside from not clicking on phishing links, and being careful with our passwords and emails, we should be careful with the kind of things we download or install into our devices.
I've seen people who download and use a different kind of keyboard software from the phone that comes with their phone. These keyboards have access to everything you type which includes passwords and every other personal details.

Also, check for what you grant permission to on your device.
For example, you'll see an app that tells the weather has permission to read your messages, what for exactly?


So what happens when hackers somehow gain access to that password manager? That has made you very vulnerable.
Trusting a third-party app is never a good idea.
Yeah, I know they're probably more secure, but they're human too and they can make errors and that error can lead to hackers gaining access to their system.

The files are encrypted with GPG and those can only be decrypted with my private key (I already tested it) , the private key that is also encrypted with a master password, the password manager is open source, I already checked the code and there is nothing suspicious on it.

The security of this is that the GPG code is also opensource, and it is widely tested over time.

If the hacker has your keystroke then he doesn't really need your permission to access the funds.

You are not the only one who received such threats I received those kinds of emails, messages, and even calls and sometimes they claimed that they even got access to my sensitive data and threatened to expose it to the contacts list but I simply ignored all their demands and they tried few times and then vanished so they got nothing other than email and trying to milk something from you.

If you still not comfortable then take legal action by filing a complaint so the person who threatens you will be in danger if something happens to you.

There are many tips and they cannot be limited to three points that I can add

• Use two-factor authentication with a device that is not and will not be connected to the Internet.
• Do not post your address publicly.
• Do not download any application you do not know or visit websites you do not know.
• I was always skeptical and looked for the source of the email.
• Use open source security tools. The less software, the better.

That's some cheap blackmail from some cheap con artist(s). I would do nothing if I got such a mail because that's an empty threat. If they actually had your stuff as claimed, you think the ratard wouldn't have hacked you long before you got that mail? For all I know, it's a randomly sent mail. I won't even bother changing anything except blocking the retard if I want.

This just broke my heart. So, it means you will never get to read my outpouring of love gesture if I eventually muster the courage to do a mail outside this forum then? I'm inconsolable 😭