Latest Spam Email Contains Your Real Password

this one, So here we go. The email starts out strong with something like I won't beat around the bush, I know that your password is, and then there it is one of your passwords. The rest of the email is a blackmail attempt. It says that it has some compromising video of you taken from your computer's webcam during a visit to an adult website. The video will be released to friends and family if you don't pay up a ransom, and the amount varies, but the email asks

for payment in bitcoin. Now this is where I think the email sort of loses it. What average person getting this email is going to be able to figure out not only how to buy bitcoin, but also how to send it to an anonymous spammer. Now, there are many variations of the email going around. One has nineteen that's right, nineteen steps on how to buy bitcoin and send it

to the proper address. That's a lot of work for an anonymous email, but still, with one of the top adult websites registering over sixty million visitors a day, the email might certainly have some folks wondering if it could be real. By the way, the scam isn't just being delivered by email. People are also getting the same blackmail message printed out and delivered to their home address through the regular mail. So what's happening here? How did they

get your password? The passwords are likely pulled from recent hacks of major websites, and there have been many high profile hacks at really popular sites. So all the scammers need to do is find one of these lists that contain a combination of emails and passwords and then mail merge them with the scam email and send them off. Bottom line, you can ignore the email, but there are some very important lessons to be learned here. First off,

don't reuse passwords. I know this is tempting since it's easy, but these days it is not a good idea. Basically, if one site is hacked, the bad guys can take your password from that site and try it at various other websites. The best thing to do is use a password manager. These are little apps that you install on your computer, phone, and tablet and they generate strong, random

passwords and remember them for you. Then when you go to that site, you can copy and paste your use your name and password into it from the password manager, or the password manager might just fill in the password for you, depending on what type of device you're using. Keep in mind you'll also want to protect your log into the password manager with what's called two factor authentication.

This means when you log in, you're going to get a text to your cell phone with a special code that you'll have to enter before your login can proceed. The idea here is that a hacker might have access to your password, but hopefully they don't also have access to your phone, so they won't get that code, and then they can't type it in and the log in won't go through. And if it sounds like a lot of work, well it sort of is. But that's the point.

Think about the information you're protecting these days, photos, documents, banking and all of your private info. It's all online and in the cloud. So two apps to look into, last Pass, which is free, and dash Lane, which costs sixty dollars a year. Another popular password manager is called one password, that's the number one and password. There you

have it. The latest email scam, plus how to protect yourself from similar attempts to steal your money or more, because once you realize the patterns here, you can help protect yourself. If you want to see the email, you can go to my website it's richon tech dot tv, or you can check the show notes for a link. Thanks so much for listening, and please let your friends know about the show by taking a screenshot of the

podcast and then sharing it to your Instagram stories. And don't forget to tag me so I can share it to my stories. All right, I'm Rich dmiro. I'll talk to you real soon