Rise in Sextortion' as people visiting porn sites are blackmailed for bitcoin payments, police says

Mumbai: The Maharashtra Police said that they have observed an increasing trend of cyber fraudsters sending extortion e-mails to those visiting porn sites.

The cyber wing of the state police said that the fraudsters are sending e-mails to those viewing porn content on such websites, asking them to make payment in bitcoins, failing which they would make public their video of using adult websites. This has come to be known as 'sextortion', a combination of the words sex and extortion.

Balsing Rajput, Superintendent of Police, Maharashtra Cyber, said, “The fraudsters place some malware on porn websites. When someone accesses such a site, the fraudsters manage to breach the data of that person. The browser then starts working as a remote control desktop, using which they access the visitor’s display screen and get the contact numbers of his friends, his contacts on social media and e-mails.”

The cyber fraudsters then send an e-mail to the user threatening that the person has been captured on the webcam viewing porn sites and the video will be released unless a payment is made using bitcoins, he said.

Such e-mails have become rampant of late, he said. “In one such mail to a user, the fraudster demanded $2900 and threatened that if he failed to pay it, then his video, which was created using his webcam, will be sent to his friends, relatives and colleagues,” an official said.