Speaker 1: The latest email scam raising eyebrows because it contains personal
Speaker 1: information one of your real passwords. What's going on? I'm
Speaker 1: Rich Demiro, this is Rich on Tech. Usually you can
Speaker 1: spot a scam email pretty quickly. You see the poor grammar,
Speaker 1: the spelling mistakes, and some of the things in the
Speaker 1: email just don't add up. But spammers and scam artists,
Speaker 1: they just keep upping their game, and their latest attempt
Speaker 1: is pretty unique. I got a lot of emails about
Speaker 1: this one, So here we go. The email starts out
Speaker 1: strong with something like I won't beat around the bush,
Speaker 1: I know that your password is, and then there it
Speaker 1: is one of your passwords. The rest of the email
Speaker 1: is a blackmail attempt. It says that it has some
Speaker 1: compromising video of you taken from your computer's webcam during
Speaker 1: a visit to an adult website. The video will be
Speaker 1: released to friends and family if you don't pay up
Speaker 1: a ransom, and the amount varies, but the email asks
Speaker 1: for payment in bitcoin. Now this is where I think
Speaker 1: the email sort of loses it. What average person getting
Speaker 1: this email is going to be able to figure out
Speaker 1: not only how to buy bitcoin, but also how to
Speaker 1: send it to an anonymous spammer. Now, there are many
Speaker 1: variations of the email going around. One has nineteen that's right,
Speaker 1: nineteen steps on how to buy bitcoin and send it
Speaker 1: to the proper address. That's a lot of work for
Speaker 1: an anonymous email, but still, with one of the top
Speaker 1: adult websites registering over sixty million visitors a day, the
Speaker 1: email might certainly have some folks wondering if it could
Speaker 1: be real. By the way, the scam isn't just being
Speaker 1: delivered by email. People are also getting the same blackmail
Speaker 1: message printed out and delivered to their home address through
Speaker 1: the regular mail. So what's happening here? How did they
Speaker 1: get your password? The passwords are likely pulled from recent
Speaker 1: hacks of major websites, and there have been many high
Speaker 1: profile hacks at really popular sites. So all the scammers
Speaker 1: need to do is find one of these lists that
Speaker 1: contain a combination of emails and passwords and then mail
Speaker 1: merge them with the scam email and send them off.
Speaker 1: Bottom line, you can ignore the email, but there are
Speaker 1: some very important lessons to be learned here. First off,
Speaker 1: don't reuse passwords. I know this is tempting since it's easy,
Speaker 1: but these days it is not a good idea. Basically,
Speaker 1: if one site is hacked, the bad guys can take
Speaker 1: your password from that site and try it at various
Speaker 1: other websites. The best thing to do is use a
Speaker 1: password manager. These are little apps that you install on
Speaker 1: your computer, phone, and tablet and they generate strong, random
Speaker 1: passwords and remember them for you. Then when you go
Speaker 1: to that site, you can copy and paste your use
Speaker 1: your name and password into it from the password manager,
Speaker 1: or the password manager might just fill in the password
Speaker 1: for you, depending on what type of device you're using.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind you'll also want to protect your log
Speaker 1: into the password manager with what's called two factor authentication.
Speaker 1: This means when you log in, you're going to get
Speaker 1: a text to your cell phone with a special code
Speaker 1: that you'll have to enter before your login can proceed.
Speaker 1: The idea here is that a hacker might have access
Speaker 1: to your password, but hopefully they don't also have access
Speaker 1: to your phone, so they won't get that code, and
Speaker 1: then they can't type it in and the log in
Speaker 1: won't go through. And if it sounds like a lot
Speaker 1: of work, well it sort of is. But that's the point.
Speaker 1: Think about the information you're protecting these days, photos, documents,
Speaker 1: banking and all of your private info. It's all online
Speaker 1: and in the cloud. So two apps to look into,
Speaker 1: last Pass, which is free, and dash Lane, which costs
Speaker 1: sixty dollars a year. Another popular password manager is called
Speaker 1: one password, that's the number one and password. There you
Speaker 1: have it. The latest email scam, plus how to protect
Speaker 1: yourself from similar attempts to steal your money or more,
Speaker 1: because once you realize the patterns here, you can help
Speaker 1: protect yourself. If you want to see the email, you
Speaker 1: can go to my website it's richon tech dot tv,
Speaker 1: or you can check the show notes for a link.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening, and please let your friends
Speaker 1: know about the show by taking a screenshot of the
Speaker 1: podcast and then sharing it to your Instagram stories. And
Speaker 1: don't forget to tag me so I can share it
Speaker 1: to my stories. All right, I'm Rich dmiro. I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you real soon