These types of meaningless emails typically contain bogus claims stating that the sender has gained access to your computer and/or your computer’s front-facing camera and that the scammer will soon expose some compromising photos and videos of you to your friends, family, work colleagues, etc unless you pay a stated sum of money to the scammer via Bitcoin within a short period of time, usually within 24-hours.
These emails may also claim that if you don’t pay the money being demanded that some of your other personal identity information (or other personal content) may also be exposed publicly onto social-media platforms and/or that you could be arrested by a law enforcement agency for not complying. But the scammer will also claim that if you pay them the money they are demanding that they will immediately delete all of your files/content and information from their computer systems and no longer attempt to extort you.
In all cases all of the above claims are purely 100% scammer lies. Thus, your computer has not been infected with any such stated malicious software and the scammer who is sending these emails does not have any access at all to your camera or any of your personal files or information. They are simply bluffing and spoofing. And if you were to send them any money at all then they would continue trying to blackmail and extort you by demanding more money from you each time you pay them.
Therefore, if you receive such an email then you should never panic, worry, or respond in any way since the emails are 100% fake and fraudulent. These emails are also known as “ScareWare” or “Sextortion” scams and so you should immediately delete these terrible emails if you have received one and continue to ignore the scammer completely. Typically, if you don’t respond to the scammer’s first extortion email, then you will never hear from the same scammer again.
Another form of very common ScareWare is when a scammer claims that they are from the FBI, or some other large government or law-enforcement agency, and the scammer is threatening that you will be arrested or charged with a crime if you don’t send the scammer a certain amount of money within a short period of time. These are again just more lies and empty threats and you should not panic, worry, or respond to the scammer’s email since these emails are also fake and fraudulent claims.
If you want to scan your computer for possible Malware or Trojans, which is always good to do as a precaution, then you can go to https://malwarebytes.com to download, install and run Malwarebytes to perform a free malware check on your computer for the possible presence of any malicious software.
Hitman Pro is another software package which offers a fully functional (30-day free trial) anti-malware program that you can also run on your system and which cleans malware, viruses, trojans, worms, keyloggers, rootkits, trackers, spyware and more. You can download it here: https://www.hitmanpro.com
