Bitcoin sexploitation scams have been around for a while, and because bitcoin, crypto and other digital currencies haven’t really got to grips with fraud, they persist.
It used to be a simple, long form, email explaining how the scammer ‘hacked’ a computer and installed malware/spyware/some super-special code, to record video of the device owner doing ‘unsavoury’ things.
it’s important to understand that blackmail and sexploitation scams DO NOT have ANY video recordings of anyone doing anything – if they did they would provide screenshots as ‘proof of life’. Scammers only care that their targets can be tricked into responding, which is why they use passive-aggressive social engineering coercion to leverage the individuals, through their sense of ‘social shame’, into compliance (isn’t it interesting that in this day an age of ‘gender expression’ that sex and gender activists don’t lobby scammer to stop “kink-shaming”).
These recordings then be released if a blackmail ransom, in the form of bitcoin, isn’t paid to an addressed listed in the emails body.
As these are essentially low authority, copy/paste, boilerplate text messages, they’ve needed a way to increase the probability of pickup. And the way to do that is by ‘hijacking’ or ‘co-opt’ the branding of adult websites like YouPorn – to be clear YouPorn et al, have no part in these types of scams, frankly they have their own issues to deal with.
What this does is lend these bitcoin blackmail scams a degree of ‘stolen valour’, it gives messages an entirely faked authority based on the misappropriation of the brands ‘awareness’ or ‘presence’, the target then being more likely to respond to the demand.
How to tell a fake YouPorn email sexploitation scam;
- bitcoin address
- pay to play content removal
- URLs don’t link to anything
