What is “I have e-mailed you from your account” Email Scam

“I have e-mailed you from your account” Email Scam is one of many sextortion emails that threaten to release a non-existent private video if users do not agree to pay money. Sextortion emails have been on the rise in the past couple of years, and while the contents may differ depending on the scam campaign, the main idea is the same. The scammers claim to have a video of you watching pornographic content and demand a payment to not send it to all of your contacts.

 

 

“Payment in two days” is the subject line of this particular sextortion email. This threatening subject line is supposed to attract users’ attention to force them to open the email. The sender of the email goes straight to the point and claims that they have access to your device. They proceed to try and scare you by saying that they have been watching you for the last couple of months after installing malware onto your computer. The malware supposedly allowed them complete access to your computer.

“This simply means I can see you at any time I wish to on your screen by simply turning on your camera and microphone, without you even noticing it. In addition, I have also got access to your contacts list and all your correspondence,” the sender claims. Supposedly, their malware is undetectable by any anti-virus programs, hence why your security program did not detect it. The malware supposedly allowed them to spy on you while you were watching pornography and make a video of it. According to the scammer, the video shows the pornography video on the right side and you watching the video on the left side. Since the malicious actor supposedly stole your contacts, they threaten to send the video to all of them. The only way to avoid this, according to the scammer, is to pay $250 in Bitcoin to the shown wallet address. A time limit of 48 hours is given to make the payment, beginning from the moment you open the email.

As far as sextortion scams go, this is a pretty generic one. They all follow the same exact pattern, first inform the user that they have been spied on via malware installed on the computer, then claim that a video of them watching pornography has been created, and finally, demand money to not send the video. There are also similar emails that use more ridiculous scenarios. One particular scam email campaign claimed that a hit on the user has been ordered, and unless they pay the requested sum, they would be killed. A similar campaign threatened to detonate a bomb unless a payment was made. And more recently, in theme with the COVID-19 pandemic, a scam campaign claimed that the user and their family would get infected with COVID if they did not pay. Out of all these campaigns, the sextortion emails are perhaps the most convincing ones.

If it hasn’t been made clear yet, none of the claims in the email are true. There is no malware on your computer (unless it’s unrelated to this) and there is no video of you watching pornography, nor have your contacts been stolen. Though for users who do not know much about computers and malware, the emails may seem convincing. Fortunately, it appears that only one transaction has been made to the provided Bitcoin wallet address, indicating that people do not easily fall for sextortion scams.

Since this is merely a sextortion scam, a pretty generic one at that, you can simply remove “I have e-mailed you from your account” Email Scam from your inbox and forget about it.

Why did you receive the “I have e-mailed you from your account” email scam?

If this or a similar email landed in your inbox, it’s very likely that your email address has been leaked by a service you use. Or there was a data breach and your information was among the data that was stolen. This kind of information is often included in a database that contains thousands of leaked email addresses and is sold on hacker forums for various purposes, such as ransomware distribution or sextortion email campaigns. Whatever the case may be, you did not receive the email because your computer is infected with malware or because your email account has been breached. You can check which data breach leaked your email address on haveibeenpwned. While you will not be able to change the fact that your email address has been leaked, you will at least be more cautious with the emails you receive.

While it’s not the case in this particular email, some sextortion campaigns contain users’ passwords or phone numbers. When users see this kind of information included in an email, they may think of the email as legitimate because how else would the sender have information like a password. The answer to that is actually quite simple. Just like email addresses, passwords and phone numbers are often leaked or breached. If you have unique passwords for every single one of your accounts, you would be able to tell which service was breached, leading to your password being leaked. These passwords are usually old ones that have been circulating on the internet for a while now. However, if it’s one that you currently use, you need to change it immediately. Keep in mind that passwords should be complex and never reused. If you have trouble with creating or keeping up with your passwords, look into reliable password managers.

“I have e-mailed you from your account” Email Scam removal

Whenever a sextortion email lands in your inbox, you can just delete it. So if you get this one, just delete “I have e-mailed you from your account” email from your inbox. It should be mentioned that some of these sextortion emails come with attached files. Under no circumstances should you ever open these attachments because they could contain all kinds of malware. If you have opened some unknown file that came attached to an email, install an anti-virus program and run a scan of your computer.