Here's What to Do If Hackers Threaten to Release Your Porn History

Officials are urging level-headedness when assessing these sorts of threats.

History Business

Police all over the country are reporting an uptick in so-called "sextortion" scams — but you probably don't have to worry about hackers leaking your porn browsing history just yet.

As Business Insider and other outlets report, the latest update to the classic ransom scam involves bad actors contacting people on emails leaked in data breaches, finding their addresses using publicly-available information online, and sending them Google Street View photos of their own homes.

As these reports indicate, the scammers behind these sorts of egregious emails make various claims meant to blackmail people into wiring them crypto or cash: that they've recorded their screens when they were watching porn, accessed their webcams and obtained "compromising" photos that they'll leak unless they pay up.

Fortunately, though, it's almost certainly a bluff that you can ignore.

Big Game

Scary as these "hello pervert" con artists sound, they are, generally speaking, full of crap.

In an explainer about avoiding scams, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) provides some expert reality checks on how these sorts of e-jerks operate.

"Scammers want you to act before you have time to think," the FTC says. "They might say your computer is about to be corrupted. They also might tell you to keep the conversation a secret from your friends and family."

Though these kinds of scams have been going on since at least 2018, repeat data breaches in which hackers leaked both email and physical addresses seem to be contributing to their frequency and convincing nature.

While there have indeed been many more sophisticated scams going around in recent years with the help of AI deepfaking and clever hackers' skills, these sextortion rackets are no such beast.

"The scammers may say they have access to your computer or webcam, or installed clever software to defeat you," the FTC said in a 2020 press release about the "sextortion" cons. "That's all talk."

More on scary scams: Bone-Chilling AI Scam Fakes Your Loved Ones’ Voices to Demand Hostage Ransom