During a couple of months, more than 200 reports have been made to the police on email extortions. The emails, sent to ordinary people, claim that the sender has in their possession sensitive videos or images captured while the victim has visited adult entertainment pages. The email messages demand the victim pay a certain sum to the bitcoin account given by the scammer for avoiding release of the material.
The scam seems to be international, but no perpetrators have been identified so far. The first reports were made in July and the number has increased clearly in August and September. Most emails are written in English, but some of them also in broken Finnish, Detective Superintendent Timo Piiroinen from the Cybercrime Centre of the National Bureau of Investigation says.
Usually the email also contains a password used by the victim for accessing a certain internet service. At least some of the passwords have probably ended up in wrong hands during previous hack or leak.
Mentioning the password seeks to frighten the victims and convince them of the authenticity of the threat. There are no such cases known so far in which the threat would have been real and sensitive material on the victim would really have been released.
It has not come to the attention of the police that the perpetrators would have sensitive material on the victims of the extortion. Some recipients of such emails do not even have a computer with camera.
- It is important that the recipient of the message does not pay anything but reports the scam to the police. The offence can also be reported on-line on the police internet page. The received email message can be attached as a copy or copied to the report. The report should be as detailed as possible, since all the information may be of use later in investigating the set of offences, Piiroinen says.
Increasing number of Finns among the victims of the scam
October is the European Cyber Security Month. A one-week Europol Cyber Scams campaign warns of current scams spreading on the internet. In Finland along with the police, Finance Finland and Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority participate in the campaign.
The number of frauds has increased clearly in recent years. In 2017, the police received over 30,000 reports relating to fraud in Finland. The authorities have been kept busy by bogus police officer scams and telephone banking scams.
- It is important to continuously share information for preventing fraud. The perpetrators find out new ways to try and cheat people, and on the net such scams may be spread extensively. Everyone should have basic knowledge of different types of scams and how to protect oneself against them, says Chief Superintendent Jyrki Aho from the National Police Board.
It is particularly important that senior citizens are protected against possible attempted scams. The next of kin and professionals working with senior citizens are in key position here.
- It is good to advise them how to avoid scams through different channels in various ways. An alleged scam should always be reported to the police. The report should be made, even if no offence had been committed yet. The reports help the police to follow the fraud situation and prevent future offences, Aho says.
On the social media the campaign uses hashtags #CyberScams and #nettihuijaus.
