We have news a new extortion scam targeting website owners and stating that the site’s reputation will be ruined if the owners fail to make a payment. It was found that the attackers are contacting owners through the contact form on the website itself. In most cases, the attackers were sending a message with the subject of “Abuse and lifetime blocking of the site – example.com,” followed by their requirements.
“Hey. Soon your hosting account and your domain xxx.nl will be blocked forever, and you will receive tens of thousands of negative feedback from angry people,” read a similar extortion email.
According to several such emails, it was commonly noticed that the scammers demanded a ransom of a .3 bitcoin, which amounts to nearly $2300 at the moment.
If the site owner doesn’t agree to do so, these scammers are stating that they shall send millions of emails from the site’s domain, leave nasty reviews about the site and send nasty emails to other websites from the recipient’s domain.
These extortioners claim that they shall bring about complete destruction of the reputation of a website which will cost a site owner tens of thousands of dollars to recover from. At the end of it all, they claim to damage your site’s reputation and force your domain registrar to block your domain permanently.
It is always scary to receive such emails when you have spent a huge amount of time, effort and money into building a website and, in a few cases, it may be your livelihood too. However, it is to be understood that such extortion emails are sent to thousands of people. If you, by chance, happen to receive any such emails, mark them as spam and forget about them.
There have been several such scams in the past where scammers threatened people by pretending to be the CIA or sent emails of bomb threats or even the recent sextortion mails where scammers claimed to have taped you watching adult content on the internet and that they are going to reveal it to your close circle online.
Every now and then, we tend to see a new scam surfacing online. However, it is up to you to be wise and steer clear from such fake claims and to mark them spam without fail.
