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Remember LJ?
Oct. 23rd, 2018 08:56 pmRemember back when we were all on LiveJournal and it belonged to some techie guys in the Bay Area? Remember when they sold it to some techie guys in Russia and promised that everything would stay the same? Remember when that turned out not to be true, and people fled to Dreamwidth instead? Remember when the Russians said the new terms of service would only be available in Russian? That's the point where I fled to Dreamwidth and left my LJ account to rot in peace.
Well, today I got email from some scammer saying he'd hacked my account and infected my computer with malware and stolen all my contacts and unless I sent him some Bitcoins he'd fry my data and post all my naughty pictures, taken with the camera on my computer, from all the nasty websites I frequent. He didn't say which account he'd hacked, but since he specified a password, I knew it had to be LJ. It was a password I hadn't used on LJ for about a year before leaving, and I'd never used it on any other system. In general, I don't re-use passwords. I left LJ about a year and a half ago, though I didn't delete the account.
I am not trembling in fear. My computer has no camera. I don't frequent nasty websites. I have no naughty pictures. I don't store my contacts in an address book, because I know that address books are a traditional weak point in computer security. I assume this scammer is just making threats to everyone he can find, hoping that some percentage of them will be frightened enough to send him some money. After all, the Internet is mainly pornography and cats, like most of the rest of the world. It's just that scammer's bad luck that I'm not interested in pornography.
If you get similar email, I suggest that you mostly ignore it. Go ahead and run a scan and make sure your anti-malware software is up to date. If you're still posting to LJ, do make sure that you're not using a password you use on any other account.
Well, today I got email from some scammer saying he'd hacked my account and infected my computer with malware and stolen all my contacts and unless I sent him some Bitcoins he'd fry my data and post all my naughty pictures, taken with the camera on my computer, from all the nasty websites I frequent. He didn't say which account he'd hacked, but since he specified a password, I knew it had to be LJ. It was a password I hadn't used on LJ for about a year before leaving, and I'd never used it on any other system. In general, I don't re-use passwords. I left LJ about a year and a half ago, though I didn't delete the account.
I am not trembling in fear. My computer has no camera. I don't frequent nasty websites. I have no naughty pictures. I don't store my contacts in an address book, because I know that address books are a traditional weak point in computer security. I assume this scammer is just making threats to everyone he can find, hoping that some percentage of them will be frightened enough to send him some money. After all, the Internet is mainly pornography and cats, like most of the rest of the world. It's just that scammer's bad luck that I'm not interested in pornography.
If you get similar email, I suggest that you mostly ignore it. Go ahead and run a scan and make sure your anti-malware software is up to date. If you're still posting to LJ, do make sure that you're not using a password you use on any other account.
