The other day, my girlfriend received the following bullying letter from the address [email protected]. First of all, since you happen to be reading this, there is a great chance you’ve received the same and may be worried.
Calm down. This is a 100% scam. That’s crystal clear from the fourth-from-the-end paragraph. If they had some recording in reality, especially since they took the time to make a beautiful collage, would it take much of an effort to attach a brief trailer? Just to kill any doubt, you know.
But in spite of that obvious flaw, it otherwise is a pretty sophisticated piece of deception. To begin with, the letter’s author is—unless AI technology has made longer leaps than I have managed to keep up with—an English-speaking human. The mass of petty scams you see online are either written by computers or auto-translated from various languages of remote world parts. This letter is written in very decent grammar and syntaxis. Furthermore, it suggests some understanding of psychology and the overall professionalism of a scammer who actually makes money, possibly a lot.
Hello [name]!
First of all I want to inform you that I know where you live [a work address drawn by public directory].
Unfortunately for you and fortunately for me, due to the fact that you regularly visit adult websites, your device has been infected with a virus.
This virus allowed me to copy all your contacts and record all your activity on your device.
I also managed to record you watching adult movies (by the way …. you have good taste).
I managed to edit a video of you masturbating and in the bottom right corner I put the video you were watching.
You can imagine what a beautiful collage I managed to make.
If you don’t want this video to reach all your contacts send me 500GBP worth of bitcoin.
My bitcoin wallet is: 1F99ocgAiB9LjcRioTrepiWLTPJaJaC5iB
If you want proof, reply to this message and your family and neighbors will be the first to receive the video.
This email has a built-in timer and from the moment you open this email you have 48 hours to send me the reward (yes….we call it reward)
Quick tip… If you don’t know how to buy bitcoin you can visit https://buy.bitcoin.com/ or do a google search
Remember, time is running out fast…tic tac… tic tac…
It drew my attention. I thought it’d make a good subject for one of those scambaiting pranks that I find an amusing pastime activity. So I darted the following response. Unfortunately for me and fortunately for them—again—the email address was set to not accept incoming messages. They follow the bite-or-piss approach. A pity, since I had some nice ideas for the continuation.
Oh my God! I am crying now. I can’t believe this is happening. I was aware that such compromises were possible, but couldn’t believe it would happen to me. I swear, I’m a good girl, going to the church every Sunday and all. I know that musterbating is against God’s instructions, have been striving to quit it my whole life, but I just can’t. I’m getting so damn horny. It’s those fat dicks, especially the black ones, that I can’t resist. Please, Taquita, I beg you, do not share the video with anyone. My parents are respectable Christians. If they find out, they will excommunicate me. Don’t worry, I know how to buy bitcoin. I have been an early investor. I have a cryptocurrency portfolio worth more than a million pounds. Wouldn’t be much to pay you 500 for not destroying my life. Just send me over your wallet address and I will pay you right away. Just please, I entreat you, for Jesus’s sake, do not let this video leak and delete it right after you receive your money. OK? May God forgive me.
