5 Types of Online Blackmail : How To Prevent | Antivirus Software

What strategies do cybercriminals use in their online blackmail schemes and how can you protect yourself from them?

The cybercriminals' tricks are endless when it comes to making money out of people's pockets online. Online blackmail is one of the more commonly used scams. According to the FBI's latest Internet Crime Report (PDF), the US victims of extortion alone complained about losses of around 107.5 million US dollars last year.

But often the blackmailers not only stick to one trick but try to exempt their victims in various ways or to force them to carry out tasks.

Ransomware

Ransomware is by far the most well-known example of online blackmail by hackers and is taking place around the world. The goals range from companies and organizations to governments and individuals. The basic requirement is that devices are attacked by ransomware with the help of various hacking tactics. This can be done, for example, by clicking a malicious link from an email, social media, or messenger message.

After the malware gets inside your device, it either encrypts your files and doesn't let you access them, or locks them out of your computer completely until you pay the ransom.

A new scam by some ransomware groups is a form of doxing. The criminals search your files for confidential information and threaten their victims with disclosure if they don't pay an additional fee. It's double blackmail.

Important for victims of a ransomware attack: Before you ask yourself whether or not to give in to the blackmailers, you should check whether a decryption tool is already available for the ransomware strain that has infected your device. By the way, the answer is: don't pay! For more information on protecting against ransomware attacks, check out our excellent, in-depth article Expert Advice on Dealing with Ransomware.

Hacking and Blackmailing

The headline explains this form of blackmail very well. After infiltrating your computer or online accounts, the blackmailers search your data for sensitive or valuable information and steal it. Although this attack is similar to a ransomware attack, it is different. The cybercriminals do this manually or in a targeted manner and have to invest much more time and resources. Unless maybe your password was obtained from a major data leak. Then the effort is reduced considerably. The victim of the hack ultimately receives a threatening email threatening the victims with data disclosure and further action if they fail to pay.

To protect yourself, consider encrypting your data, securing all your accounts with a strong password, and enabling two-factor authentication wherever possible.

Sextortion - Blackmailing with Sex Pictures

The English term sextortion is a combination of the English words sex and blackmail. This form of blackmail threatens to reveal sex images of the victim. The blackmailers operate in different ways. For example, they use dating platforms to start a fake romantic relationship with the victim and gain their trust. Later attempts are made to shift communication from the platform to normal messaging services. This is done to prevent the dating apps security mechanisms from detecting potential scammers. Once you leave the platform, attempts are made to persuade the victim to share slippery or intimate photos or even videos of themselves. They are used to blackmail the victim.

Or the hackers try to hack a victim's computer or webcam to secretly take snapshots or voyeuristic videos. American model and former Miss Teen USA Cassidy Wolf fell victim to such blackmailers.

You should absolutely avoid sending slippery images to other people. This also applies to people you trust, as you cannot rule out the possibility that their devices or accounts could be compromised and that the sensitive photos could be discovered. Also, it is often not possible to rule out with certainty that the relationship with the recipient will change and one will then regret it. To reduce the likelihood of a hack, you should update your devices and software regularly and protect them with a reputable security solution.

Sextortion Scams

This fraud is less of blackmailing sex pictures than of a bluff in which the fear of an alleged publication of supposedly existing pictures is exploited to persuade the victims to pay. The scam is not very sophisticated and consists of an email accusing you of visiting a pornographic website. The scammers claim that they have both a screen recording of the material you are viewing and a webcam recording of you while you are viewing it. If you don't want them to release the material, you'll have to pay.

An active and powerful spam filter protects you from such spam and fraudulent e-mails and allows you to process them in the shortest possible time.

DDoS extortion

Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks (DDoS) against companies are not uncommon. They are often used by cybercriminals to sabotage companies' services and make them inaccessible. It is not uncommon for those behind these attacks to rent out their damaging infrastructure via DDoS marketplaces. For the attacks, the criminals usually use a large number of machines, which act as a so-called botnet are organized to flood a target with requests so that the systems collapse under the onslaught and are effectively offline. The attackers can hold out this for days, which can result in companies losing hundreds of thousands of euros in sales. Recently, a group of cybercriminals posing as notorious groups of hackers threatened various organizations and companies with DDoS attacks. They only wanted to refrain from paying a ransom of $ 57,000 to $ 227,000 in Bitcoin .

Setting up a firewall to block access to all unauthorized IP addresses and using services against DDoS attacks are just some of the steps companies can take to protect against DDoS extortion.

Conclusion

There are a few things you can do to reduce your risk of cyber extortion. Start following cybersecurity rules in both your professional and personal life. This includes strong passwords, the use of two-factor authentication and regular updates of your devices and antivirus software. Also, avoid recycling passwords as this leads to a lot of account compromises.