What is “I am sorry to inform you but your device was hacked” Email Scam

“I am sorry to inform you but your device was hacked” is the opening used in a new sextortion email campaign that threatens to publicly release users’ private videos if they do not agree to pay $1650 in Bitcoin. It’s a fairly typical sextortion scam that follows the usual pattern and doesn’t have anything particularly interesting about it. Considering that the whole email is a scam and all claims are false, paying the requested sum would just be giving away money to scammers for no reason.

 

 

“Do you do any of these embarrassing things?” is the subject line of this sextortion scam email. These emails usually land in the spam box so they need eye-catching subject lines to make you open them. From the very beginning, the email uses threatening language to claim that your device has been hacked using “a Zero Click vulnerability with a special code”. According to the email, the malware is a “complicated software that requires precise skills” and was able to get inside your computer when you visited some compromised website. Supposedly, the malicious actor has controlled your computer and watched you watching pornography for the past couple of months. They claim to have made a video of you watching the adult content and threaten to send it to your contacts, as well as post it on various websites.

“I think you already know what is going to happen next. For a couple of month my software was quietly collecting information about your habits, websites you visit, websearches, texts you send.
There is more to it, but I have listed just a few reasons for you to understand how serious this is,” the email claims. The sender then proceeds to make an “offer”. They promise to delete the supposed video if you agree to send $1650 in Bitcoin to the provided wallet address. The email claims that the price is non-negotiable and the sum needs to be transferred within 2 business days.

As we mentioned in the beginning, this sextortion scam follows the typical sextortion scam pattern. It first informs the user that they have been spied on using malware installed on their computer, then claims to have made a video of them watching pornography, and finally, threatens to send the video to all their contacts. These sextortion emails usually don’t look at all legitimate in any case, but some of them are outright ridiculous. In the past, there have been extortion emails that threaten to infect users and their whole families with COVID-19, made threats to detonate a bomb planted in a user’s place of work, and claimed that a hit has been ordered on the user. Out of all of these, the sextortion emails are perhaps the most convincing ones.

Since this is nothing more than a sextortion scam, you do not need to pay anything. Nor do you need to worry about there being a video of you watching adult content. The entire email is nothing more than a scam. Fortunately, it appears that no one has fallen for this scam, judging by the zero transfers made to the wallet address. Though it’s likely that the wallet address is not always the same in this scam so it possible that there are victims.

You can simply delete the “I am sorry to inform you but your device was hacked” Email Scam from your inbox. Do not pay the requested money because the video does not exist. Nor is your computer infected with malware, unless it’s unrelated to this sextortion scam.

Why did you receive a sextortion email in your inbox?

Like all spam, sextortion emails land in the inboxes of users whose email addresses have been leaked or part of a data breach. Email addresses are perhaps the most common information that is leaked and it happens all the time. Leaked email addresses are usually sold on various hacking forums for scam and malware distribution purposes. So if you received a sextortion email, it’s not because your computer is infected with malware but rather because your email address has been leaked. You can use haveibeenpwned to check whether your email address was revealed in some data breach. You can’t really do anything about it but if it has been leaked, you will at least know that you need to be extra careful when opening emails, particularly if they contain file attachments or links.

We should also mention that some sextortion emails contain users’ phone numbers, as well as passwords. In many cases, this information is accurate, which makes the scams much more believable for users. However, there is a very simple explanation of how such information is included in sextortion emails, and it does not involve anyone hacking computers. Just like email addresses are leaked, the same can happen to passwords and phone numbers. So if your password and/or phone number is included in a sextortion scam, it means the information has been leaked. It does not mean that your computer has malware in it. While you cannot do anything about a leaked phone number, if the revealed password is one you still use, change it immediately. You should also never reuse passwords because if one account gets hacked, it would allow malicious actors to get into other accounts with the same password as well. If you have trouble creating and keeping track of strong passwords, look into password managers.

“I am sorry to inform you but your device was hacked” Email Scam removal

When sextortion scam emails land in your inbox, you can just remove them. Do not be worried about their contents or pay attention to the threats. Keep in mind that these scams are never legitimate, even if they contain your information, such as your phone number or password. We should also mention that some of these emails come with email attachments and/or links. Be careful to never open the attached files or click on the links because you would likely be exposed to dangerous content, including ransomware and other malware infections.