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9-11-2024 11:43pm
Email Phishing Scam Uses Photos of Homes, Local Spots to Claim Personal Knowledge of Victims
Darlene Cancell
Editor
Over the past week, a number of Westwood residents have reported receiving emails that contain a photo of their home or nearby location and attempts at extortion with threats to release sensitive, personal information about the victims.
Westwood Police have received reports on September 3, 4, 5, and 9 from different Westwood residents regarding the receipt of just such suspicious emails. Each email has included a photo of the resident’s home or nearby location along with a threat to take control of the resident’s computer accounts and/or disseminate embarrassing information about the resident if a payment is not made. The payment demand was around $2,000 in three of four reports, with the dollar amount not being specified in the fourth case.
By including the home photo, which may be publicly available, scammers may be trying to trick the email recipient into believing the scammer’s claim that the email sender has personal information that could embarrass the victim. Such email scams appear to have been widespread over the years, and have occurred locally as well as nationally.
On September 6th, WBZ News reported that residents in Needham, Foxboro, Marion, Sandwich and Sharon have been recipients of these emails recently.
In 2020, the Massachusetts Attorney General warned the public against “sextortion” email phishing, after the MA AG received over 100 reports from consumers who said they had received an email from an unknown sender who claimed to know the victim’s passwords for accessing embarrassing information about the victim’s online activities. In the sextortion pattern, the email sender threatens that unless a payment is made (often in cryptocurrency bitcoin), that embarrassing photos or videos will be released to the victim’s friends, relatives, and co-workers.
The MA AG has advised consumers that they should ignore and delete such emails; report the email to local police and the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center; update and replace their passwords using a combination of letters, numbers and symbols; and avoid opening attachments or clicking links from unknown senders.
Updated 9/13/2024 at 11:33 a.m. Thanks to Lieutenant Christopher Sheehy and the Westwood Police Department for contributing information for this Westwood Minute article.
