From Being Hacked to Getting Extorted...
Things could get uglier for me yet...
Over the last month(ish), as some of you are aware…my network had been compromised and a lot of my online accounts were taken over.
It started with Twitter and extended outward…Amazon, email addresses and even streaming services and into some online services that I haven’t opened in years…forgot I even had.
Some standard security features were seemingly worthless to prevent this…some accounts I was able to recover…some accounts are completely lost.
We went to the police to file a report…but as it turns out, this is a complete waste of time…
You see…both myself and my wife had accounts breached through the network but because only funds were taken from her account, via Amazon - in purchasing and sending multiples of gift cards sent to random emails - this was the only portion of the breach that was able to be reported…other accounts, personal data, private information…the fact that I run an online business - via Substack, monetization through Twitter/X…is of no real matter…to them.
The fact that my Twitter/X primary was taken over, which did have an impact…nothing can be done.
No report was even made - even after having compiled screen shots of the compromised accounts and footprints that were left behind…
The officer, who we spoke to at the District 3 - Calgary Police Station, explained that given the vastness of the internet and because most of these crimes are committed from countries that don’t actually do anything to by way of prevention or apprehension of these criminals, there simply is absolutely nothing they can do so don’t bother with even creating reports on these.
In fact…the officer stated that a lot of these countries have law enforcement services that are “in on it”…meaning, the hacking, theft of personal information and extortion.
Not really reassuring at all, to be honest.
Add to this, that Canada has Anti-Spam legislation, where by if you are not compliant with Canada’s anti-spam law (CASL), you can be fined up to $1 Million as an individual to $10 Million for corporations.
So…get your identity stolen online…ZERO.
Send out some spammy emails, $1-10 Million in fines.
Other countries do not enforce these rules on their citizens, while Canada looks to punish it’s own…shocking, isn’t it?
Welp…today, my online breach went from a simple hack to extortion. Received this at one of my email addresses:
With a screen shot of my open browsers as verification.
Scary?
I’d say…
The last attempted breaches of my online profiles was Tuesday of last week, 2 Factor warning about somebody trying to gain access to one of my accounts…nothing since then, until this email arrived.
While a google search does reveal that this is not new, I haven’t actually found out if any of these other scam victims had their information shared…
One fella, was threatened with this:
I recently came up with an interesting idea: to create a video clip in which you masturbate in one part of the screen and watch a porn site in the other, such videos are now at the peak of popularity!
This was not in my threat…mostly because all of the information on my drives, on my network, in my email and social media accounts are as dull as the day is long. The camera that I have is specifically used for one thing and one thing alone - townhalls/podcasts, and is capped otherwise. My security cams are outside of my home and if somebody sat to listen to something remotely interesting on one of my phone or home conversations…they’d die a lonely death.
However…there are some accounts that I cannot do without…there is some information that I would not like to see published on the open net or wherever this person has intents on releasing this…
Paying this seems like a terrible idea…because if I coughed once, I’d fully expect there to be additional requests…
I’ll be making another call to CPS, to see if anything can be done…but will most likely do my best to continue to cleanup and secure my devices and accounts.
And I guess we’ll see where this goes over the next 48 hours…or few weeks/months…
Sigh!
"Trust me, I always keep my word" Trust me says the hacker and thief.
If they had any specific data they would have made some reference to that and not just written in general terms. This is just an automated scam sent to millions, is my guess. But I don't remember seeing that particular one in my own inbox yet.