Every once in a while I look through my spam folder to make sure nothing slips through the cracks. Normally I can tell a spam email from a legit one but I received one and I hope I’m paranoid, but with a few other events it seems fishy. Here’s the email (received December 26th, opened and read early afternoon December 28th):
Hey,
As you can tell from the topic your mail account was jeopardized. You can additionally see i have mailed you this mail from your own private mail account. Read this COMPLETE message and i will inform you what action to take. Some time ago you checked out some mature sites. On one of these sites i set up a backdoor and your device was contaminated by it. As an example, i know one of several online passwords you utilized was actually “***********". I've got entrance to all your contacts, your mail accounts, your data, and so on. It is not important how many times you adjust your security passwords, i will continuously posses access to your system using my backdoor. Every now and then i also triggered your cam and taped some pleasant video clips of you whilst you "pleased your self" enjoying mature contents. I have additionally saved all the documents from your system and saved all your contacts. I could possibly deliver all the unpleasant video i posses to each of your contacts and e-mail contacts however i'm going to offer you a way out so keep on reading and discover how to avoid this.
Throughout these holiday breaks I suppose that you do not want me to deliver the "very exposing" video i posses of you to all of your contacts, friends and family. Picture the shame!
For my secretiveness i need you to transfer $825 in BITCOINS to my address: 13xvyAgeKTkKLY9w9FD2HAqdgCHxztexSi (copy/paste this, it is case sensitive) If you do not know how to utilize BITCOINS, browse google, it is a piece of cake and you can purchase them on loads of sites utilizing your debit or credit card.
When you opened up this mail my setup initiated a timer, starting now you posses eight hrs to generate this transaction. My setup will observe the BITCOIN address i gave you for any transactions. If it does arrive in time all the information i posses on you will be removed, the backdoor on your device will kill itself and you will never ever hear from me again. If the transfer does NOT arrive in time my setup will instantly deliver the "exposing" clips i posses of you to ALL your contacts, friends and family members. Moreover, your device will be locked up and you will never ever have the ability to utilize it again, even if you unplug it from the web.
Do not take this personally, i reside in a nation where it is extremely tough to feed my household, that is exactly why i do this. I did not focus on you, you checked out the wrong web site at the wrong time.
Your time is counting!
This email has obviously been edited to exclude my password, which was definitely the correct password for my account (I run Mojave on a 2017 MacBook Pro) but not for my email or most other accounts. I don’t think this is legit but a few other events have me slightly worried. Three separate times this year I have had money fraudulently withdrawn from various bank accounts totaling almost $10,000. Each time the bank has given me my money bank and I am switching banks soon in part because of these events (but not entirely).
15 minutes ago I also noticed “runChmm” running at startup on my laptop. A quick search has lead me to believe that this is some form of malware that I should have no business with. I run Chrome and am given to believe that Chromium might be running in its place and I wouldn’t know it, but that seems unlikely. Still, not impossible.
The wallet address has been reported before for similar scams/events. From what I can tell, a read receipt was not sent. I know email address can be spoofed; I took a look at the header and see a lot of yahoo.jp so I’m not worried about it actually being from my account.
I am 90% sure this is a scam. Am I fucked? Moreover, what can I do to protect myself? Do I need to close ports? I assume I need to delete runChmm? Keep my laptop disconnected for a while? I don’t think this is real but these things happening at the same time have me a little concerned. Sorry for long winded post, but I appreciate any help.
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