LinkedIN breach brings cyber crime blackmail
Have you ever been blackmailed? Have you ever received a threat that you would be harmed in some way if you didn’t send bitcoin money to some cyber criminal? It’s happened to me yesterday, and it can happen to you. How do I know?
An email arrived in my mailbox the other day that contained my name, email and password for my LinkedIN account. The account is the only place the criminal could have found the password. I immediately went to LinkedIN.
Arriving at LinkedIN, I could not find any place to report this intrusion. There are no live links to anyone in security or TOS. When I clicked to contact, it takes you to a page of questions to narrow your inquiry. You click and click and end up on a lising of links to their “help” files — none of which addressed this problem. I tried another route. Same results. So, I simply dug down until I got to the “Delete Account” button. I clicked it and am hoping they actually deleted the account.
The threat was simple : send $3,000 in bitcoin or we’ll email and post a porn video with your video captured from your laptop cam to all your contacts, all your Facebook friends and all your LinkedIN contacts.
Here’s the full email:
If you have a LinkedIN account, and a camera on your computer, I suggest you delete that account immediately and raise the security level for your computer and phone.
I’m not too worried myself because I’m running a Mac. I also put black tape over my camera several years back when Mark Zuckerberg put black tape on his laptop cam. So if this cyber criminal actually can carry out the threat, my video will have pure black in the video, or it will be someone else. I don’t frequent porn sites, so he’s obviously going to make something up. We’ll see.
But one thing is for sure. He got my attention with my LinkedIN password.
Be careful, folks. Keep your guard up, and make your computer and phone as impregnable as possible. If you receive such email, don’t reply, don’t click and delete it immediately.
Be safe, and thanks for reading!
