Email extortion scam with your iPhone password

Apparently, there are now millions of extortion emails circulating.   These are called crypto blackmail, and like other scams, they're bothersome but meaningless.  If you're receiving them (I started getting them every day on July 17) Chris Hoffman at How-to Geek wrote a great article that should give you comfort.  

What is CryptoBlackmail?

As Hoffman says, "CryptoBlackmail is any sort of threat accompanied by a demand you pay money to a cryptocurrency address. Like traditional blackmail, it’s just a 'pay up or we’ll do something bad to you' threat."

He offers these examples of CryptoBlackmail:

• Physical mail saying “I know you cheated on your wife,” and demanding the equivalent of $2000 in Bitcoin sent to an included Bitcoin address.
• Emails saying “I’ve got an order to kill you,” followed by a demand to pay $2800 in Bitcoin to call off the assassination.
• Emails claiming an attacker has placed malware on your computer and recorded you watching pornography along with a video feed from your web camera. The attacker also claims to have copied your contacts, and threatens to send the video to them unless you pay $1900 in Bitcoin.  (This may be the most popular one, and the one I received.)
• Emails including a password to one of your online accounts along with a threat and a demand for $1200 to make the problem go away. The attacker just found your password in one of the many leaked password databases and hasn’t compromised your computer.

If you read this list, you'll understand that these criminal emails are not personal.   They're form letter threats.   "Someone may just send letters saying “I know you cheated on your wife” to a large number of people, knowing that, statistically, many of them have." 

What should you do?  Quoting Hoffman again:  

Don’t Negotiate or Pay or Even Respond.