Belgian Internet watchdog Safeonweb received more than 4,600 reports of “sextortion” scams last week, an extremely high number, Mediahuis Group newspapers reported on Tuesday.
"In a sextortion scam, you receive a message in which the scammers claim to have hacked into your computer and taken intimate pictures of you while you were watching a pornographic film," Katrien Eggers of the Centre for Cyber Security Belgium (CCB) explains.
"The scammers threaten to release the images if you do not pay them a certain amount of money," she adds. "Often, they ask you to pay this amount in bitcoins.”
“If you have never shared personal sexual images, the scammer is bluffing. Do not give in to the demands for money and file a complaint with the police,” Eggers advises, noting that, most of the time, these are scams and the scammers do not have compromising content.
Safeonweb distinguishes between 'sextortion scams' and 'sextortion.'
Sextortion refers to extortion using sexual images: hackers convince their victims to send intimate pictures on the Internet, then the crooks threaten to release them if the victims do not pay them money or send them more photos.
No-one is off limits for this type of cybercriminal: this summer, the European Center for Missing and Sexually Exploited Children (Child Focus) opened 29 sextortion cases.
