DS being blackmailed by an email saying videos/pics on his phone will be sent to his contacts unless he pays into a bitcoin account

[ArentYouInBedYet]

Any advice please?

Thank you, and the other poster who said to hover the mouse over it to see the email it was sent from 👌

Oh dont you worry!! He has had his bag packed with clean washing done and folded nicely and a marmalade sandwich neatly packed and will be outta my door asap!! 😂

It's a very common scam :(

Aww bless him glad he's calmed down.

This Yes it did start with "Hello Pervert", which now the panic and stress is over I keep saying when he walks in the room is top notch parenting 🤣🤣🤣

I've had this one more than once. They're very welcome to send out whatever they find to my contacts, the main risk is that it will bore them to death.

I get them often. I just ignore.. lo and behold, nothing happens. It’s just scam mail. Ignore and move on.

Yep, get them.regularly though at start I did forward onto.my board of directors with a reassurance that despite their claims, I had not been masturbating at my desk and filmed.

I.laughed when I saw the minutes of the meeting where it was noted that my self pleasuring did not take place in my office.

I regularly get emails saying they have videos of me watching porn and they will send the footage to.all my contacts unless i send them bitcoin. As I have never watched port and.dont have bitcoin I just report the email as a scam, block and forget it.

Well known scam. I doubt very much they've got any videos. And personally, if I got an email from someone I didn't know, with a link to some video that I wasn't expecting, I wouldn't even take the risk and click the link anyway, and I'm sure I wouldn't be alone in that. So even if there was a video, a lot of your son's contacts might never actually watch it.

If I got this, the most response it would get out of me is "jog on" - they can send videos from my phone and be damned, there's nothing more exciting on there than videos of my cousin's bulldog snoring!

Had it too! Its a scam!!!

I just don’t get the angst, ADHD or no ADHD. I’ve had this and went ‘meh’ as I knew it was a scam. It clarified that they had remotely installed a bug on my phone so that it had been recording me and had the ‘evidence’ it was going to release to all my contacts. But, worse case if it was true was that incredibly boring video footage of me (scrolling Mumsnet, the news etc) would be released along with photos like an interesting bird I saw in a tree, flower on a bush, or screenshot of a train timetable. They could knock themselves out releasing it all, for all I care. Obviously not true though.

For anyone getting a dodgy email - Look up the scam page on Reddit. Pretty much every scam out there is discussed on their page with good advice

Can't hurt to change his email password (in case his current one has been part of a data leak) just to be on the safe side but other than that he really doesn't need to worry OP, we get this one regularly and nothing terrible has happened yet. It is scary the first time though, even if you know you haven't watched anything dodgy it's still not nice thinking someone might have access to your device and that you're being targeted by some faceless hacker. Hope your son is ok now and you're both reassured it's nothing to worry about

Ignore.

There are loads of these daft scams about. Just delete them.

DH had one the other week which was a "real official warrant for his arrest" apparently due to images of child abuse on his computer. If he didn't reply to "the police @ hotmail . com " which i'm certain is a real police email, his details would be shared with two national news programmes within 24 hours.

I did put the news on especially the following day, which resulted in DH telling me to kindly fuck off but it was just the usual misery.

I've just seen this thread and as it seems this well known scam is doing the rounds again, thought I'd check my junk emails and lo and behold I've had one, only it's all in Dutch. I've absolutely no idea why they have sent me an email written in Dutch, I don't speak Dutch and it seems pretty pointless trying to extort money from someone if they don't understand the message.

I can confirm that it starts with "Hallo viezerik," which apparently does indeed mean Hello Pervert.

Hopefully he looks good in the footage op. That’s what I replied when I received a similar email. Never heard a thing about it again.

@IncognitoUsername because turning 18 doesn’t mean you never need anyone’s help ever again!

I had one about 18 months ago.

Changed all passwords (it was to the one account that had not been changed in a long time).

"Although if you reply to the “hi mum I’ve lost my phone” text with something along the lines of “you’ll have to be more specific as to which child you are given I have more than one,” they block you 😂."

And they add your number to their list of active numbers because you were stupid enough to reply

Sometimes they will reply to that question with crap such as 'your youngest and favourite child'. I agree, best not to reply at all.

I agree about replying. As tempting as it is to send back a witty, timewasting reply all it does is flag your email address as active. Oftentimes, the person sending the email doesn't speak/read English very well and your wit and sarcasm will be lost on them.

Plus, it is not the person sending the email or making the phonecall who is earning from the scam. They're employed by big bosses and paid peanuts, often working under the threat of violence towards them or their family if they co-operate with law enforcement or leave under suspicious circumstances. And most of the time they are living in abject poverty and unable to feed themselves or their families. They are as much a victim as the scamee is.

It's best to just report as phising then block and ignore.

I get those spam emails all the time! Ignore

Your son is clearly a good lad for coming to you. Like 105% of other male teenagers his age, he's probably watched porn on his laptop, so speaking to you about it must have been at least a bit embarrassing.

Like this one op?

I get ones like this every so often, just ignore and block.