[2019-04-20]€600 in Bitcoin Lost by Sextortion Victims in Italy

[Vladdirescu87]

Due to weak cybersecurity and a lack of effective blockchain & bitcoin regulations, the cases of scam and sextortion are on a high increase in Italy. The cybercriminals have been claiming to be possessing special pictures, and videos containing pornographic contents.

Criminals claim that they have got the recorded videos of the victims watching this so-called pornography and other explicit videos – these were got after violating the victim’s device and then recording the person.

Read the details in the article of Coinidol dot com, the world blockchain news outlet: http://bit.ly/2INwX0D

[Kakmakr]

Hey, if you are too stupid to cover your webcam when you are surfing porn and if you have to do that in secret, then you deserve to be a victim of this scam. Watching normal porn is not a crime in most countries and it is a fact that most of these so-called recordings are false, so just ignore this blackmailing from these criminals and just go on with your life.

A lot of people "hide" their porn surfing from their partners and then they make themselves targets for these attacks. These criminals are just waiting for you to respond to these emails and then they start with their extortion, so do not even respond to their emails.  

[hugeblack]

These criminals are just waiting for you to respond to these emails and then they start with their extortion, so do not even respond to their emails.  

The article talks about some of the crimes related to porn, which may be punishable by imprisonment for many years in some countries, especially child pornography, "punishable by imprisonment for more than 6 months in my country."

and this amount could soar especially if the spirit of claim is that of having child pornography material. If the writer (scammer) ever tries to inform the relevant authorities like the police, then the victims could be charged with more than €1000 or even arrested.   

Unfortunately, this is a common way of exploiting victims, especially if they are known personalities.

[Lucius]

This so-called news outlet should start posting news in Italian local board since most of posted articles are related to that country. I will not even open the article to see whether it is an error in the title or it is all this about €600, quite a large amount of money for a country such as Italy.

This kind of blackmail is nothing new, people in this forum report such e-mails for some time, and it is very well explained even last year what to do in case such e-mail is arrive in your inbox - just mark it as spam and move on.

For those who want to research part of the reported blackmails I suggest to visit this site.

[o_e_l_e_o]

This kind of scam has been going around for years. Usually the email that is received contains a user's real username and password for a service like their email, cloud storage, or social media, that has simply been pulled from one of the many database leaks or hacks that have been happening for years. The idea is that the naive user sees their own password and panics, believing the rest of the email to be true, when it obviously isn't.

Hey, if you are too stupid to cover your webcam when you are surfing porn and if you have to do that in secret, then you deserve to be a victim of this scam.

I have no idea why people don't have their webcams covered 24/7, unless they are actively making a video call or similar. We know the NSA (and who knows who else) can take photos and record video from webcams without you knowing about it. Go in to your phone or tablet's permission and be shocked at just how many different apps have full control of your camera for no discernible reason. The first thing I did when I got my new laptop, before I even turned it on, was to open it up and physically remove the webcam. If you don't want to do that, put tape over it, like everyone who works at the FBI does. Buy a case for your phone with a sliding camera cover or similar. Assume all your cameras on all your devices are recording all the time, because they could well be.

[veleten]

this has been going for ages , Italy just one of the countries hit by the blackmailers
also this is not about covering your webcam , they do not have any videos or any other thing to blackmail you with this is a simple scam
where they get your search history at one of the porn sites or even login/pass combinations and go from there
so only login on the trusted porn platform , do not go for the fancy new ones as tempting as it may look *kidding

[Wayan_Pedjeng]

Once again, the media is trying to demonize Bitcoin with their half-cooked facts. There are thousands of cases of blackmailing reported from all over the world every day. Is bitcoin being used in all of them to get the ransom from the victims? I am sure that in 99% of the cases fiat cash is used. So will you blame fiat cash for these crimes? I am not trying to downplay the crime. It is a very serious criminal activity and the perpetrators must be put behind bars without any delay. But it is really foolish to blame Bitcoin for this.

[Reatim]

Once again, the media is trying to demonize Bitcoin with their half-cooked facts. There are thousands of cases of blackmailing reported from all over the world every day. Is bitcoin being used in all of them to get the ransom from the victims? I am sure that in 99% of the cases fiat cash is used. So will you blame fiat cash for these crimes? I am not trying to downplay the crime. It is a very serious criminal activity and the perpetrators must be put behind bars without any delay. But it is really foolish to blame Bitcoin for this.

News outlet will releases hot topics and that includes cryptocurrency, what i  wondering is why this are usually happen in Italy? Do.the Italians are that lazy on having security for their accounts? Sorry but i see the problem from the victims and not from the criminals because how can you be blackmailed if you are doing nothing bad in reality? So thats why the victims are paying becauae they are accepting their own fault's? Sorry if i missed something here

[buwaytress]

So we're blaming naive actions by the victims on the poor regulations on blockchain? So all the online scams, with victims surely much more numerous than these "sextortion" victims, is all down to weak governance structures and poor regulation of the internet?

Come on, guys. Own up. Vlad, do you ever read our comments? You share all right stuff sometimes but surely there were better headlines?

[Harlot]

They can easily blame the country for lacking regulations on something but the truth is blackmailing not even involving cryptocurrencies are happening all around the world, it cannog even be stop by a complete regulation for the cryptocurrency industry. Why do they think that a regulation would stop a criminal just by having specifice laws in their country when they can easily find a loophole by doing the extortion on another way? This won't even happen if the victims don't fall trap on this kinds of foolishness laid down to them yet they focus on something that is really out of the picture.