I may be getting blackmailed, but I don't know if it's a scam/phishing or if it's a serious threat.

[HuskyLover]

Today after getting home from school I went onto my email to check for anything new or out of the ordinary, then I saw a message with the title/subject " Max, Important Notice" and the message was just a bunch of all caps letters with 2 attachments. I previewed the attachments and in one of them was a somewhat messed up message. The message basically said that a virus has been installed onto my PC and that they threaten to post a fake video and send it to all my friends and family as well as social medias and the video is very messed up. They threaten to do this if I don't send $1000 to their bitcoin wallet within the next 48 hours.

If anyone here knows anything about this stuff or can assist me in figuring out if this is a real threat or not please leave a comment on this post. I need all the help I can get cause I'm constantly stressing about this now and I'm honestly scared of what could happen.

[omenGL]

bruh i hope this is satire

its called a phishing scam, just ignore it

[Aaron Faustin]

First of all the chances of them actually having anything against you is extremely low.

Second of all, And i can't stress this enough. Whether they DO or DON'T have anything to use against you, DO NOT give them any money. They would only ask for more and more and more.

They are ruthless, If you ignore them and don't give them anything they will move on to the next potential victim. If you do give them money they will attempt to clean out your bank accounts.

Edited September 17, 2022 by The Bats

[HuskyLover]

Update, sent a report to the FBI it indeed was a scam, thanks for the help

 

[Lime King]

2 hours ago, HuskyLover said:

Update, sent a report to the FBI it indeed was a scam, thanks for the help

 

This is a very common scam that many people get daily. They will threaten you with leaking personal info or certain videos/pictures of yourself in order to scare you so much that you forget common sense and cave into their demands. THEY WILL NEVER HAVE ANYTHING ON YOU, and you did good reporting it to the FBI Cyber Crime (Lets go FBI) since they deal with this all the time. And if you ever give them money there is nothing stopping them from continuing scamming you. Once someone pays your info gets moved up the food chain since people that fall victim to one scam are MUCH more likely to fall for another one.

[Aaron Faustin]

3 hours ago, HuskyLover said:

Update, sent a report to the FBI it indeed was a scam, thanks for the help

 

 

14 minutes ago, Lime King said:

This is a very common scam that many people get daily. They will threaten you with leaking personal info or certain videos/pictures of yourself in order to scare you so much that you forget common sense and cave into their demands. THEY WILL NEVER HAVE ANYTHING ON YOU, and you did good reporting it to the FBI Cyber Crime (Lets go FBI) since they deal with this all the time. And if you ever give them money there is nothing stopping them from continuing scamming you. Once someone pays your info gets moved up the food chain since people that fall victim to one scam are MUCH more likely to fall for another one.

Us FBI will handle it from here. Thanks for the report.

[Asteria Silver]

You did the right thing reporting it to the authorities. I do understand your concern as to whether or not this was a legit scare or not, but most times these emails are just Phishing. Like others stated, if you ignore it they will just move onto the next potential victim.