Cases of ‘sextortion’ involving threats of releasing alleged compromising videos are growing online,warns an official Swiss body. The advice: don’t give in and don’t pay. Such cases led fraudsters extorting some CHF360000 ($359040) in the latter half of last year, while over CHF40000 was gathered by a single account in early 2019, or the Swiss Reporting and Analysis middle for Information Assurance (MELANI) said on Thursday. Victims receive an email claiming that their webcam has been pirated and that they have been filmed watching or masturbating to pornography; they are then told that the fabric will be sent to all their email contacts unless a certain sum of bitcoins or francs is handed over. + The spiking phenomenon of cybercrime in Switzerland To make their claims seem more plausible,the scammers often include in the mail a password belonging to the victim, a personal telephone number – even the threat of an acid or bomb attack. The mails are so plausible – and ...
Source: swissinfo.ch