Does a Scammer Have Your Password?

The internet gives people access to a lot of useful and helpful information. However, if a person is not careful, they can inadvertently give someone out there access to their own personal information. There are dozens of scams out there that people use in an attempt to gain a victims personal information. While many are pretty straightforward and easy to recognize, there is a new one going around that feels more legit than any other.

This new scam involves a person receiving an email where the sender claims to have videos of the person taken from their personal computer while the person visited an adult website. The scammer than proceeds to threaten the person with the release of the video if they do not pay off the scammer. The real kicker? The email contains the person’s actual password.

The fact that the message contains a real password of the person is often enough to scare them into sending the requested money, which is something that they shouldn’t do. Experts have stated that the email is bogus, and that the password was likely acquired from a recent data breach of one a major website.

This is why many experts recommend using different passwords for different sites and changing the passwords frequently. Doing this will help ensure that your private information is actually kept private while online.

If you recently received an email like this, ignore it and report it to your email provider as spam. If you were one of the people who received the message through the actual mail, then report the letter to the US Postal Inspector.