{"id":685,"date":"2020-05-12T11:33:50","date_gmt":"2020-05-12T11:33:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/itsecurity\/?p=685"},"modified":"2020-05-12T13:44:10","modified_gmt":"2020-05-12T13:44:10","slug":"increase-in-blackmail-scams-sextortion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/itsecurity\/2020\/05\/12\/increase-in-blackmail-scams-sextortion\/","title":{"rendered":"Increase in Blackmail Scams (Sextortion)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We are getting more reports of sextortion scams, which are a type of blackmail. These look very similar to the ones highlighted in a previous blog article.\u00a0 The method of operation and advice remain the same. <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/itsecurity\/2018\/07\/24\/blackmail-scam\/\">Click here for the original article<\/a> and advice on what top do if you have received one.<\/p>\n<p>We do get asked why we do not block these.\u00a0 Many do get blocked and we do introduce measures to increase the effectiveness of these blocks when it is practical to do so.\u00a0 These are in addition to externally supplied filtering mechanisms\u00a0 which are improved and updated automatically in a similar way as anti-virus software.<\/p>\n<p>However, each campaign is different, new addresses are used each time, messages are individually tailored and the text is often encoded.\u00a0 \u00a0This makes the task of blocking challenging and not always effective.<\/p>\n<p>Sophos published an <a href=\"https:\/\/nakedsecurity.sophos.com\/2020\/04\/10\/sextortion-emails-and-porn-scams-are-back-dont-let-them-scare-you\/\">article and video<\/a> about these recently.\u00a0 Interestingly, as a security vendor, they explain that even with filtering in place some of these will get through.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We are getting more reports of sextortion scams, which are a type of blackmail. These look very similar to the ones highlighted in a previous blog article.\u00a0 The method of operation and advice remain the same. Click here for the original article and advice on what top do if you have received one. We do &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/itsecurity\/2020\/05\/12\/increase-in-blackmail-scams-sextortion\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Increase in Blackmail Scams (Sextortion)&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/itsecurity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/itsecurity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/itsecurity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/itsecurity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/itsecurity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=685"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/itsecurity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":689,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/itsecurity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685\/revisions\/689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/itsecurity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/itsecurity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/itsecurity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}