HCSO issued warning about an email scam claiming Webcam of the email recipient has been hacked

The residents of Humboldt County, a county located in the State of California of United States, have become a target of email scam. A report has been received by the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office (HCSO) about an email scam that is sent to the local residents of the county. Thus a warning has been issued by the Sheriff's Office of Humboldt County, which wants the people to remain careful from an email scam claiming that the webcam of the email recipient has been hacked. The Humboldt County is situated on far North Coast, i.e. about 430 km (or 270 miles) north of San Francisco.

As per the HCSO, the email sender writes in that mail that the computer of the email recipient has been hacked and webcam of the computer has been activated without the knowledge of the victim.

The email further says that a video has already been recorded of the email recipient accessing adult websites by the hacker, and that video will be distributed to the entire contact list of the victim if huge amount of bitcoin is not sent to the hacker, as per the Sheriff's Office of Humboldt County.

The HCSO also says that one of the local residents, who became the victim of this email scam, said that she has received this email in reply to Craiglist Posting. Thus it is possible that other Craigslist, a website of American classified advertisements, users might have received similar kind of email threat.

The Sheriff's Office of Humboldt County says that this email is blackmail scam, and is being circulated throughout the nation since last year.

To make the scam look more realistic, the email sender in some of the scam variations also provides password of the email recipient that he/she have used or is currently using.

The HCSO encourages the public that they should never send any kind of gift cards, cash, bitcoin, or wire money in case they receive these blackmail-type emails from the hackers. The Sheriff's Office also suggest to report about those scam emails as well as phone calls to the local law enforcement, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) or the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

» SPAMfighter News - 2/11/2019