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MCC Daily Tribune

Spam Extortion Scam

MCC personnel are now being targeted with a scam that claims to have compromising information on the target. The banner saying the email "did not originate from the MCC Employee Email system" is not showing up. The following is an excerpt from the article, "Extortionists Increasingly Using Recipients Personal Information to Intimidate Victims." The article was published by the Internet Crime Complaint Center.

Scam Commonalities:

  • The recipient's personal information is noted in the e-mail or letter to add a higher degree of intimidation to the scam. For example, a recipient's user name or password is provided at the beginning of the e-mail or letter. (Previously used passwords are easily found on the Internet and are used to lend credibility to the claim).
  • The recipient is accused of visiting adult websites, cheating on a spouse, or being involved in other compromising situations.
  • The e-mail or letter includes a statement like, "I stumbled across your misadventures," or "I installed malware on the adult video site" as an explanation of how the information was supposedly gathered.
  • The e-mail or letter threatens to send a video or other compromising information to family, friends, coworkers, or social network contacts if the ransom is not paid.
  • The e-mail or letter provides a short window to pay, typically 48 hours.
  • The recipient is instructed to pay the ransom in Bitcoin, a virtual currency that provides a high degree of anonymity to the transactions.

At MCC spam emails can be reported by forwarding them to spamsubmission@monroecc.edu. If you have questions or concerns, please call Technical Support at 292-TECH (8324), option 3.

Christine Gallion
Communications and Network Services
03/12/2019