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The Atherton Police Department sent out a news bulletin warning of a new email scam that has been reported by several residents of Atherton.
According to Atherton police, residents have reported receiving emails claiming that malware has been downloaded onto their computers, allowing the sender of the email to access personal files and sensitive private information.
The scammers then threaten to release private information if the recipient does not pay them in Bitcoin.
Police say that some emails even include photos taken of residents’ homes in order to make the threats appear more credible.
In an email to this news organization, Cmdr. Dan Larsen, a spokesperson for the Atherton Police Department, confirmed that the images of residents’ homes appear to be screenshotted from Google images or a similar mapping application.
He also said the emails include lines such as “you’ve been treading on thin ice with your browsing habits,” and “It’s simply a misfortune that I found your blunder.”
The Atherton Police Department is warning residents that any emails like this are a scam, and said that the public should not reply to these emails under any circumstances. Recipients of emails like this should also never provide any personal information to the senders of the email, make any payments or respond to any threats made in the email.
“If you receive such an email, (you should) delete it immediately,” according to the bulletin.
Nicole Acker, a spokesperson for the Menlo Park Police Department, said that they have received one report of a similar scam.
Scams like these, which extort people by claiming that the scammers have access to sensitive pictures of the victims in addition to their personal information and pictures of the victims’ homes, have been proliferating throughout the United States according to a report by Forbes. These scams are also known as “sextortion” scams due to the nature of the materials they threaten to release.
Cooper Quintin, a computer privacy and security researcher with the Electronic Freedom Foundation, says that scams like these are common, but that this newest version is even more alarming because it includes images of the scam victims’ homes.
“This is a super common scam — almost everybody gets it,” he said. The newest version of it is even more alarming than in the past. The past version would have your name and then some claim about how they had seen you through your webcam. … Now, the scam has evolved to have your address and a picture of your house. But it’s not true, and do not fall for it.”
Quintin says that scammers don’t even need to be physically present at your home to include a picture of it in threatening emails. “The unfortunate fact is that pictures of all our houses are on the internet. They’re on Google Maps, they’re on Apple Maps, real estate websites — they’re all over the place.”
Scammers can easily find your name, email addresses and physical address because that kind of data has been listed in so many data breaches over the years, according to Quintin.
“(The scammers) write a program that goes through these data breaches, gets the email, gets the name, gets the address, goes and downloads a picture of the house, puts it all together in an email and sends it to you,” he said. “And then, if they do enough of these, and they’re scary enough — which they are — it makes money, because people pay the money because they’re worried that they’ll be exposed.”
Quintin says the only real way one can protect themself from a scam like this is to learn what the scam looks like, and to not fall for it.
“I want to hammer on the point of, do not pay them,” he said. “A) your information hasn’t been leaked. B) paying them only encourages them to continue this scam.”
