Bitcoin Forum

A quick article that says it all then a short opinion...  your opinion in comments... please.

Here is an article from  InsideBitcoins (http://insidebitcoins.com/news/anonymous-bitcoin-extortion-letters-in-connecticut-threaten-murder/29396?utm_source=Daily+Bitcoin+News&utm_campaign=ebffeae93a-Inside_Bitcoins_Daily_News_2_3_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_85421fb960-ebffeae93a-226580645)

NEW YORK— More than a dozen people in Connecticut have received anonymous letters threatening to kill family members unless a bitcoin ransom is paid. Local law enforcement authorities in Fairfield County and the FBI are investigating the 14 threats, delivered to residents’ homes in letters postmarked from Austin, Texas and Jacksonville, Florida.

The letters detail how to open an account and issue a $2,000 bitcoin payment before a Feb. 13th deadline:

“[Recipient] you do not know who we are, but we have been tracking you and your loved ones for a while now. We know your schedules. We know where you all live and spend your time. We also know how to kill any one of you without being caught. Now [recipient], don’t panic. This isn’t personal. You did nothing to deserve this. You were just one of a handful of families unfortunate enough to draw our attention.

However, nobody has to die. Allow us to explain. You have until 12:00 PM on February 13, 2015 to pay us $2,000. If you do not comply with that simple demand, the following will happen: we will kill you, [recipient], or someone else to whom you are close. Or you can simply pay us the $2,000. To make the payment do the following.

1. Open an account at any online Bitcoin exchange, such as Bitstamp.net or Coinbase.com
2. Deposit $2,000 into that account. Do not wait until the last minute to do this. It will likely take you about a week to open an account, get it verified, and process the transaction.
3. Use the entire $2,000, minus whatever small fee the exchange charges, to purchase Bitcoins on the exchange. If you are unsure about the process of buying Bitcoins, Google it.
4. Withdrawal (sic) all Bitcoin you purchased to the following Bitcoin address: 19vcdWcV4J8bhH7j3igHZ5q4WGT2UX5V2S
5. Be sure to type all 34 characters of that Bitcoin address in EXACTLY. It is case sensitive. The first character is a number “one”, NOT a lowercase “L”.
6. You are finished. Breath (sic) easy, and live your life in peace knowing you will never have to deal with us again.”

The letters also include a “Note to Law Enforcement” explaining that police will never be able to catch or identify the culprits. So far, residents in Farmington, Ridgefield and Redding, Connecticut have received the threatening mail, addressed to one resident at each address, but mentioning the names of others living in the homes.

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For this reason and this reason alone, bitcoin can never become mainstream or allowed to go on much further without Government intervention. There are reasons why we can't have anonymous financial transactions and this is exactly why not. If we lived in a truly honest society with no evil intent (impossible) then possibly the idea behind bitcoin would work. But when we think about the real life implications of anonymous transactions, then we should all realize now is the time to get out. It cannot ever become what we all hoped because the scammers of the world will always be there and we cannot, as a society, allow them to have a tool in which to terrorize, threaten, extort and steak from hard working people who are targeted simply because of their use of bitcoin.

Imagine your child is kidnapped in a world with and then without bitcoin.

Without: In order to ask for and recover a ransom... there needs to be a physical drop off, or trackable transaction which can allow for the recovery of the child or the funds. Many possible situations must be contemplated by the criminals including... stings, tracking embedded cash, set-ups, etc. etc. Making the job of the criminals difficult.

With: Simply kidnap who you want, demand bitcoin. Kill those who do not comply, collect from those who do.

So, guys...  can bitcoin be allowed to continue or should we cut our losses?

 

So you are saying extortion wasn't possible until 2009?



You are also suggesting the hardest part of kidnapping and murder is money transfers. And with that so easy people are bound to get on with the easy part of kidnapping and murdering. Debunked enough?

"Be sure to type all 34 characters of that Bitcoin address in EXACTLY. "

Maybe it's a joke?

Not at all... as stated, evil will always be there but the current way financial transactions are regulated, it makes the job of a would be extortioner or kidnapper difficult. Bitcoin opens the door to constant terrorizing of good honest people.

For example, these letters are threats, obviously. But let's pretend that they send 1000 letters, are paid 0 and then kill 5 people. Then send out another 1000. Those next 1000 people are put in a tough situation that is allowed because of bitcoin.

You still have to communicate to people be it online or letters, both of which can often be traceable. Kidnapping etc are serious offences, of people are caught they go down for a long time. And that's before anyone is actually hurt in any way.

Fact is... as tough as the killing/kidnapping part is... the threat is easy.

I can't imagine if I got a letter today saying pay $5000 or we kill your son. Sure, I would dismiss it but the fact that I have to think about the possibility that my son could be killed because I didn't pay this amount.

Lets drop the killing and kidnapping.  What about the release of private photos?  Financial info?  Bank Account numbers?

Now the emails from hackers can say, I will release all your personal info unless you pay me $25. Do you know the time involved in clearing your name when identity theft takes place? Now you must decide $25 or hours on the phone correcting this information release

This has definitely nothing to do with Bitcoin. This happens with cash, a lot.
This is why we have law enforcement. If those people get killed, then you blame the government for not successfully doing their job.

How about you ignore those emails? How about you work on security measures that would prevent hackers for getting into your account?
You just have to stay low (meaning, you won't be a likely target among so many internet users), use encryption, and stay away from shady websites/files.
I know such a situation could be a pain, but if you pay him $25, he will ask for more. Then you end up in a endless circle of Bitcoin payments

Again, get away from the killing issue and look at small demands that these people can make. Without bitcoin, there are few tools that help hackers find new ways of stealing funds. Today is the first day that I realized that this is just a tool for scammers and the implications of its adoption far outweigh the benefits of the same.

That could have been said a 2 or 3 years back, but not today.
I've posted some additions in the post, you probably missed them.

Interesting...so your thoughts are: A new technology comes out, it brings with it new difficulties as well as new benefits, but because I don't like some of the difficulties it brings, it should be banned...

You sir, are an idiot. If the world was run by people like you, we'd never advance technologically at all. I'm sure during the early days of the internet, it was thought of as a haven for pedophiles, drugs, porn, etc, but look at it now, yes it has it's bads, but it's goods as well(As does everything in life).

Why should it be an joke? It was written on an piece of paper, not in electronic form.

Pieces of paper are also capable of displaying QR codes.

From the eyes of a criminal, there's no difference. In those African states where kidnapping is relatively common, organizing the recovery of a ransom isn't a problem. The criminals know too well that as long as they keep one hostage, the person paying will not take any risk which could endanger the life of the person kidnapped. Hey, even governments with all their power and armies pay ransoms!

It's very hard to kill 5 people anonymously.

This isn't something new, criminals adapt to technology the same way we all do, that same argument could be made for email and how easy and anonymous it is to send Nigerian scam letters, and I'm pretty sure it was made.

First of all, I would throw this letter in the trash. This is on par with Nigerian Prince scams.

More to the point, you can't make this kind of stuff go away. The government can ban bitcoin all it wants, and it won't stop people from being able to send letters just like this and demand $2k worth of bitcoin (or some other cryptocurrency if you'd rather).

This type of objection to bitcoin has come up many times. Yes, bitcoin can be used for a lot of bad things. So can many other technologies that are primarily or even overwhelmingly used for legitimate purposes. Bitcoin happens to be one of those technologies that you can't make go away. So evil uses of bitcoin like this suck, unfortunately, but I don't think you can make them go away and even if you could somehow eradicate cryptocurrency from existence, this sort of extortion would still happen to a large extent using other means (and I'm sure nowadays most extortion is still using fiat currencies and not bitcoin).

This has essentially no bearing on whether or not bitcoin will work as a massively useful means of facilitating and conducting financial transactions, in my opinion.

Typical asshole.  Yeah, I'm an idiot. What happened to the internet genius? It has been regulated. Hence, protecting people from being harmed (for the most part, and not counting stupidity) So, that is what I am saying and you yourself have proven... bitcoin as it stands cannot and will not grow to the mainstream acceptance until some sort of regulation is placed on it. Facts of life. I don't like it but it is what it is.

It is kinda like space flight. Yeah, we lose a few people every once in a while but the good out weighs the bad. But you didn't see them put 500,000 people on Apollo 2 for a reason.

ERRRRM, why is no one pointing out how bad the post office is?? So a letter is sent via a service that doesnt allow them to be traced and we are blaming bitcoin? Am i missing something here? Cash is still king, dont forget it. Cash still is used in more ransoms than the market cap of BTC for the next ten years. You can jump ship if you want too, just let me give you my wallet address first. :) ill take em.

This has nothing to do with BTC and everything to do with people.   

Paper money has the same problem. So, should be paper money banned? Knives are used to attack people? So, should be there a ban for knives?



So, I'll rewrite that letter. Lets see the difference.



Planes should be made illegal. Imagine what can happen if a control of a plane go to the hands of a terrorist, like happened in the September 11th? Santos Dummont killed himself after seeing what the militaries were doing with the planes.

The problem is not with Bitcoin itself, but what people do with Bitcoin. But for criminal activities, they don't need Bitcoin. They use paper money. They use gold. They use silver. Or exchange drugs for arms. Or vice-versa.

The same goes to kidnappers. They kidnap who they want and demand cash. You can call the police, but in this case the kidnappers can do what they promised.

Edit:


Wrong. Hackers steal a lot of funds from traditional banking and POS machines.

Or when they can't do this, they'll just go to some place with ATMs and explode the ATMs with TNT (here in Brazil, this happens every day).

Thanks guys, you talked me off the ledge a bit

What a silly question. Unlike fiat, Bitcoin isn't backed by nuclear warheads that could wipe out life on planet Earth thirty six times over.

A sane question would be, "can nation states be allowed to continue or should we cut our losses?"

Really? Did you know a sect of the U.S Government funded Tor? What is Tor used for a lot? Illegal activities. Have you heard of the "darkweb"? Please go do your research. But Tor also provides privacy that's almost unrivaled by other programs i.e proxies and that's something we need in a ever growing transparent world.

All I'm saying is new technologies are bound to be used by the bad guys, but you can't let that stop it from progressing, or we would never get anywhere.

"If they'd have to wage the first world war on gold it likely would have ended by Christmas 1914..."
http://youtu.be/joITmEr4SjY?t=14m48s

This has about as much to do with Bitcoin as the paper the threat was written on or the post office it was sent from.