in-cyprus 27 April 2020 -Bouli Hadjioannou
Police have warned the public to be on alert with regards to extortion emails which are malicious and must be deleted immediately.
The messages contain a password that appears similar to the user’s, threatening that they have obtained access to their accounts and should they fail to make a payment in cryptocurrency they will make public the user’s online activity on porn websites.
In the email, scammers request recipients to wire into an e-wallet the amount of $1900 in bitcoin
These messages are fraudulent and malicious and recipients should not pay or reply or negotiate with the sender. Instead, the messages should be deleted immediately, police said.
Internet users are also advised to take the following measures:
- When they are asked to wire funds to an account that is different from the one they normally use, they should verify the wiring request with the message’s sender, as sometimes scammers pretend to be someone else.
- Change their email password regularly and use a two-step verification technique for access to their email.
- Use protection programmes for malware on their laptop and mobile devices and update them regularly.
- Do not click on links embedded in emails from unknown contacts as they may redirect to malicious websites or download malicious software.
- Regularly check their redirection settings of their email. If a redirection filter to an unknown email address is found to be active then they should delete the setting and contact the police.
The public can contact the Cybercrime unit via the website cyberalert.cy to report an incident.
