"Local residents are experiencing an old email scam with a new twist: Sextortion scammers appear to be hacking into breached databases and using old passwords for leverage over their victims.
Scammers claim to have videos of their intended victims on their laptops while they watch pornography on the internet. They threaten that if a certain amount of money isn’t paid, they will send those videos to everyone in their target’s address book. The password trick is just an additional ploy.
Kevin Morton, owner of Franklin computer repair shop Nerds-To-Go, was working on a sextortion case when contacted on Thursday afternoon. He said scammers are usually all bark and no bite, but he has seen a higher volume of these calls for help coming from the Milford and MetroWest areas in the past few weeks.
“To fix it, just simply delete the email and change the password,” Morton said. “It’s not really necessary to get a new email address.”
Continue reading the article online (subscription may be required)
http://www.milforddailynews.com/news/20180729/sextortion-scam-hits-franklin-over-past-week
Regular readers will recognize that I share info from the FTC on scam alerts that they post. Being vigilant these days is required. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Several of these alerts can be found in the archives
http://www.franklinmatters.org/search?q=FTC%2C+alert
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