Just had a weird email! Please help

[Aeaffshb]

I got an email from myself with my full name written on and my email address. It said “hello pervert….” And said it’s downloaded a spyware called Pegasus and will send a video of me to all my contacts! I kind of know it’s fake as I’m very boring and do nothing dodgy but I’m a little worried as I carry my phone everywhere with me such as in the bathroom, in bed etc. is this real? I’m doubting as it went into my VIP list and had my full name on it! Shall I start deleting my contacts?

I've had this. Apparently they caught me wanking while watching porn. Hilarious. I've never watched porn, I'm very boring and my laptop sits in a public part of the house so at best they caught me farting and picking my nose while trying to write a board paper up. Even though I knew it was a total scam it still shook me for a while...

I had one of those. Saying they had naughty pictures of me and they would send them worldwide if I didn't pay up. It would have broken every screen anyway lol. Ignore x

It's a bit like the guy who sent a message to ten friends, saying 'Fly, all is discovered!'

Nine of them left town.

Emails like this play on everyone's fears.

😆 farting, and picking your nose! 😂

I got one of these messages sent from my own account. It accused me of some sort of perversion, I can't remember what. As a woman in her 70's whose exciting days are long gone, I had a chuckle.

There have been endless hacks of companies and government where email addresses, names, tel numbers etc get leaked. Some we know about (Co-Op, M&S etc, some we don't). These lists are sold on the dark web and used to create emails such as that you received that look convincing. They are aiming to scare you... bin and ignore. Do NOT click on anything in the email. Run your virus scanner regularly.

Just get smarter on how to spot scams and you never need to be scared.

there are plenty of ways to identify emails such as this one. I know they test your sanity, but you have to add a big dose of skepticism and cynicism to everything you read and don't let them get to you, that's what they want.

I had one once that accused me of the most disgusting acts and threatened to report me to my employer, social groups, family members. At the time it felt real, but I knew deep down it wasn't true. They prey on your sense of justice, that you know you're innocent yet they claim to have all this stuff on you.

I’ve been on the other side of this - received a Facebook messenger message request from an unknown that contained rather compromising images of someone on my contacts list. I’m assuming taken from their device camera.

Look in your sent folder for reassurance it wasn’t sent from your account and delete it

You can download a vpn which hides ur real ip address, and get a decent antivirus

If you want, you can forward it to [email protected]

I've had a few of them threatening to send videos of me to my family and friends. Knock yourself out, scammer.

There is a useful website which let's you know if your e-mail has been involved in a data breach:

https://haveibeenpwned.com/

I’ve had loads of these, but I’ve never opened a single one of them. If you have your email so you can see the first line of the content, then you can immediately tell it’s one of these emails.

Never mind not clicking the links, FGS just don’t even open an email that starts “Hello Pervert”!!

I’ve had them that come from me and I’ve also had loads of them that apparently come from old people I know from church!

I actually was really disturbed by it the first couple of times, but now I just laugh about it.

The one that nearly got me was a phone call to my landline (yes, I still have one) telling me that my debit card had been temporarily blocked as suspicious transactions had been made. To Amazon and something else. A recorded message in a posh voice asking me to press 'one' to transfer to a bank operative. It was quite early on a Saturday and I'd just woken up but thankfully I realised just in time that my bank has a million security questions. They're bastards.

usually say that you have been watching porn etc, TOTAKL SCAM IGNORE IT DONT PRESS ANY LINKS RELAX

Scam just delete it

Have I Been Pwned is a good place to check whether your data has been leaked.

https://haveibeenpwned.com/

Mine has. Tbh I'd be surprised if anyone wanted to look at videos of me 😂

It's a very common scam.

They can't control your account or devices unless you click on links to download spyware.

Block, ignore and consider researching cyber crime and common scams because honestly most people get these kinds of emails and know the signs of scams.

The hackers still do it to weed out the minority who, like you, aren't sure and panic.

As everyone else has said, it's a scam based on enough people feeling vulnerable enough to respond. It's one of the most basic scams as there's no virus or malware, just a total pack of lies to encourage you to panic and pay the sender to not share supposed intimate information. I could send you an email and it'd be just as legitimate - ie not all all genuine and no basis in fact. I get them quite regularly and often from "me" to "me" - that's the easy part to replicate. They often threaten to share naked pictures from my photo album with friends and family. Go for it ! If someone can find such things b my phone or PC they're a better person than I am. It's a spoof totally reliant on scaremongering tactics. Delete and move on - and maybe get an antivirus that will quarantine similar emails at source. Either way, relax. These scams work by targeting millions of people at once in the hope that a few will respond. Our emails are mostly publicly available and spoofing them to appear as if they came from yourself isn't hard.

Zero to worry about.

My mum was saying she got this same email yesterday! Clearly it’s doing the rounds. Don’t worry about it

I’ve had this multiple times. A few years ago a man I worked with posted on Facebook about it saying how he’d received it and refused to be blackmailed so was outing himself on Facebook in case any of his friends received any videos of him. I felt really sorry for him…

I had it too. When I saw ‘hello pervert’ I actually laughed. Then deleted it.

It’s email spoofing - so not sent from your email address but they’ve faked the ‘from’ heading so it looks like it’s from yourself. You can check where it’s really from by viewing the message source (probably Russian).

It’ll most likely have your real name because your mail app has (mistakenly) linked the email to you.

I’ve had it today - just deleted it

i did pmsl at Tapis carpets receiving a video of my ‘jacking off’ ( not so much the youngest school), honestly it’s a total scam