Sadly, over the years, we’ve needed to write numerous Naked Security warnings about romance scammers and sextortionists.
Although those are general-sounding terms, they’ve come to refer to two specific sorts of online crime:
The good news in the case of a porn scam is that the crooks don’t have anything on you, and the “malware” they claim to have implanted on your computer is just a pack of lies.
The bad news, however, is that there is a form of online sexual extortion that is effectively hybrid of romance scamming and porn scamming, where the criminals involved do indeed have content with which to blackmail you.
These hybrid “romance-combined-with-porn-scam” criminals typically approach you on a dating site, just like the romance scammers mentioned above, and court your interest, but they don’t take their time to milk you for money over an extended period.
Instead, they persuade you to exchange explicit photos, often leading you to think you can trust them by sending you their own explicit photos first. (As you can imagine, they use other people’s photos, not their own.)
Sadly, the scam then unfolds just like the porn scam mentioned above: “Pay hush money or we’ll spread the news to people you don’t want to know about it.”
The difference in this case, of course, is that the criminals do indeed have explicit material.
Unlike the old-school porn scammers, that part of the story isn’t a bluff, because they’re using the photos you sent to them under the mistaken impression you could trust them.
Worse still is that, while sexual blackmail is bad enough in general, there are some specific victims who are even more vulnerable than others, notably those whose sexuality is a secret to start with.
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), America’s consumer protection body, has therefore issued a very particular warning about this sort of extortion to people in the LGBTQ+ community who aren’t yet “out”.
As the FTC explains:
[The criminals] usually work something like this: a scammer poses as a potential romantic partner on an LGBTQ+ dating app, chats with you, quickly sends explicit photos, and asks for similar photos in return. If you send photos, the blackmail begins. They threaten to share your conversation and photos with your friends, family, or employer unless you pay — usually by gift card.
Other scammers threaten people who are “closeted” or not yet fully “out” as LGBTQ+. They may pressure you to pay up or be outed, claiming they’ll “ruin your life” by exposing explicit photos or conversations.
Whatever their angle, they’re after one thing — your money.
One real-life reminder of how cybercriminals sometimes turn on each other is the infamous Conti ransomware breach from August 2021, in which aggrived affiliates of the Conti ransomware “services” turned on the operators of the scheme by publicly dumping an archive file called Мануали для работяг и софт.rar (operating manuals and software).
Whatever your sexuality, and whatever the type of scam you get hit with, remember that if you are in the US, you can report online fraudsters at: https://reportfraud.ftc.gov.
The FTC’s online form is easy to use; you can supply as much or as little information as you know or want (as far as we can see, you can identify yourself as much or as little as you like, too); and you can report scams as varied as “just an annoying call”, fake love interests, phoney government officials, and fraudulent investments.
In the UK, use: https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/
In Canada, use: https://www.antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca/
In Australia, use: https://www.cyber.gov.au/acsc/report
In New Zealand, use: https://report.netsafe.org.nz/hc/en-au/requests/new
LEARN MORE ABOUT ROMANCE SCAMS
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