Use Caution! Waiting for the payment. (I receive email)

[Ghel]

I received a very amusing email today supposedly from my own work email address, sent to my own email address. Here it is, with my thoughts added, and one piece redacted:

Hello!
Have you recently noticed that I have e-mailed you from your account?
Yes, this simply means that I have total access to your device. [Bullshit. ]

For the last couple of months, I have been watching you.
Still wondering how is that possible? Well, you have been infected with malware originating from an adult website that you visited. [From work. Yeah, sure. ] You may not be familiar with this, but I will try explaining it to you.

With help of the Trojan Virus, I have complete access to a PC or any other device.
This simply means I can see you at any time I wish to on your screen by simply turning on your camera [that I don't have] and microphone [also don't have], without you even noticing it. In addition, I have also got access to your contacts list and all your correspondence. [That might worry me if I didn't think it was complete BS.]

You may be asking yourself, "But my PC has an active antivirus, how is this even possible? Why didn't I receive any notification?" Well, the answer is simple: my malware uses drivers, where I update the signatures every four hours, making it undetectable, and hence keeping your antivirus silent. [Thanks for telling me your supposed secrets. I don't know enough to know if this is a valid technique, which is probably what they're relying on.]

I have a video of you wanking on the left screen, and on the right screen - the video you were watching while masturbating. []
Wondering how bad could this get? With just a single click of my mouse, this video can be sent to all your social networks, and e-mail contacts.
I can also share access to all your e-mail correspondence and messengers that you use.

All you have to do to prevent this from happening is - transfer bitcoins worth $1450 (USD) [That's oddly specific.] to my Bitcoin address (if you have no idea how to do this, you can open your browser and simply search: "Buy Bitcoin"). [ He doesn't even want to give me instructions.]

My bitcoin address (BTC Wallet) is: [redacted]

After receiving a confirmation of your payment, I will delete the video right away, and that's it, you will never hear from me again.
You have 2 days (48 hours) to complete this transaction.
Once you open this e-mail, I will receive a notification, and my timer will start ticking.

Any attempt to file a complaint will not result in anything, since this e-mail cannot be traced back, same as my bitcoin id.
I have been working on this for a very long time by now; I do not give any chance for a mistake.

If, by any chance I find out that you have shared this message with anybody else, I will broadcast your video as mentioned above. [Go ahead. Broadcast that non-existent video. ]

Somebody spoofed my email address and sent me an email to try to blackmail me. I'm still giggling.

[Buzzard]

"I'm completely undetectable by rapidly changing the drivers" - Technobabble bull... manure. The more you change things and access outside stuff, the more opportunities for an AV to catch on that something isn't quite right here.
It's a copy-pasta of one that made the rounds when someone broke security on a BitCoin forum and got user emails. The target audience were well versed in all things BTC, which is why there's no instructions on HOW to transfer funds. The price of the demand seems to have gone down a bit.

Since they're still running that scam, there's obviously the occasional sucker who pays up. It's just a numbers game at this point.

[Dreamstalker]

So this 'virus' creates a webcam and mic where none exist? Damn, those nanobots are getting good...

[EricKei]

Yup. A spam message asking for like ten bucks could succeed with only 1% of 1% of the recipients, and, if a million emails were sent out (takes maybe 5 minutes), that's 100 suckers sending $10 each...at a thousand bucks, they've turned a massive profit on the undertaking. THAT'S why this shit still happens.

[Argus]

I got one of those at the office a year or two ago. I didn't bother to report it because the address was a group email for everyone in that office, including IT.

I did check the headers to see whether they'd done something interesting with the sending address. No, it was merely the equivalent of sending a physical letter with the recipient's address in the middle and the upper left. (Or maybe of doing something similar with the standard business letter format.)

[RealUnimportant]

I started getting those last year, just after I came out of a 2-month stay in hospital. if they got pics what happened during that, then I pity them... and also am very impressed, as the internet was terribly unstable!

It is all utter nonsense, of course. I am amused that they state the dollar amount now, they started off stating the bitcoin amount... before it crashed again!

One line they do finally seem to have deleted from this version: my original ones had "for proof, email me back" which always was a pointless exercise because they deliberately send it with no way to send anything back!

[Ironclad Alibi]

So this 'virus' creates a webcam and mic where none exist? Damn, those nanobots are getting good...

Didn't you know that TVs have been watching viewers every since the mid 1950s? One of the kiddie show hosts said they could see my in my pajamas.

[Racket_Man]

So this 'virus' creates a webcam and mic where none exist? Damn, those nanobots are getting good...

BUT think of the Borg????

[Slave to the Phone]

If any hackers really did manage to turn my camera on so they could see me naked...they wouldn't be able to type to threaten me because they would have clawed their eyes out.

My grandfather once told me that his doctor (same age, so probably mid-60's) was threatened by a woman who wanted drugs. She said she would tell everyone he had raped her. He countered by saying something like "Really? You'd tell everyone that I was able to do that? I'll give you 10 bucks!"

[Javarod]

I received a very amusing email today supposedly from my own work email address, sent to my own email address. Here it is, with my thoughts added, and one piece redacted:


Somebody spoofed my email address and sent me an email to try to blackmail me. I'm still giggling.

We control the horizontal
We control the vertical

[Kristev]

Please, if you can control all that I see and hear for the next hour, I beseech you, put an end to all these awful and oversexed commercials selling garbage nobody needs with promises that it'll improve your life (which they won't).

[csquared]

If the offered that, I might just pay them.

[Jay 2K Winger]

I received an email like that once. (Twice, actually, from different individuals.)

Problem was, they were addressing this to "Jay Winger," whereas if they actually did have access to my personal computer (or even my work computer, which is even more laughable, for much the same reasons as the OP), they'd know that isn't actually my name, and would have addressed me by my real name instead of Jay Winger.

So I ignored both of those emails.

Sure enough, nothing happened, and I went about my day.

[Ghel]

Yeah, that's another thing. I didn't mention in the OP in order to keep things simple, but they were using my old email address, from before I went back to my maiden name. I still receive emails with that name, but I send all my emails with my current name. So that was an obvious red flag, too.

[RealUnimportant]

I got one entirely in japanese yesterday. That's new. I have recently ordered some products from Japan, but the email wasn't sent to the address I used so I'm chalking that up to coincidence.