Never pay. A sextortion email is almost always a bulk message sent to thousands of recipients. The sender does not know who you are and has no footage. Paying does not help, and it confirms to the scammer that your email address "works".
Author: Kevin Lah Anyane
Expert in customer support & crypto
What exactly is sextortion?
Sextortion is a form of online extortion in which the sender claims to have intimate footage of you, usually "recorded through your webcam while you visited an adult website". He threatens to send this footage to your contacts unless you transfer an amount in bitcoin.
Two things stand out about these emails:
- The email appears to come from your own address. That is called email spoofing, a technical trick that lets anyone put any sender on an email. Sites like sendanonymousemail.net let anyone do it. It proves nothing about a hack.
- Bitcoin is demanded. A bitcoin address is a string of letters and numbers that cannot be traced back to a person. The extortionist cannot link money received to you, which at the same time means he cannot see whether you paid or not.
Why is this almost always a bulk trick?
Sextortion emails are sent in large volumes, sometimes millions at a time. The extortionist hopes a small percentage will be frightened enough to pay immediately. Three typical patterns:
- No personal proof. Real blackmail would contain at least a screenshot, a sample clip or a clear personal detail. Sextortion emails never deliver that.
- Generic threats. No specific date, no name of a family member, no recognisable address. Everything is vague.
- Sometimes a real password. This often comes from old data breaches (Adobe, LinkedIn, Dropbox). A quick check on haveibeenpwned.com shows whether your details were in a breach.
The same message, almost word for word, appears on forums in dozens of languages. On bitcoinabuse.com/reports you can see that plenty of people received your message too.
What should I do instead?
Four steps, in this order:
- 1. Do not pay. Not a single euro, not half of one, nothing. Paying solves nothing and puts you on a list of "people who do pay".
- 2. Change your password if you find it in old breaches on haveibeenpwned.com. Use a unique password for every service. A password manager (Bitwarden, 1Password) helps enormously.
- 3. Put a sticker over your webcam if you are genuinely worried. It is a harmless physical measure that removes any camera risk.
- 4. Report it. In most European countries you can report cybercrime online. It helps the police track patterns, even though it is rarely possible to trace the extortionists individually.
Important: does the email come from someone who does deliver personal proof (a real screenshot, your name in the email, a specific recent situation)? Then this is not standard sextortion. Report it straight away and share this advice with someone you trust.
Are you being extorted with real footage or by someone you know personally? That is a different story and does not fall under bulk sextortion. Talk about it, with someone you trust or through a victim support organisation in your country. This is not your fault.
What does such an email look like?
A typical fragment from an English-language sextortion email:
"I have very bad news for you. On that day I hacked your operating system and got full access to your account. My malicious program is installed on your device. I have a full copy of your drive and all your contacts. I have made screenshots of you enjoying yourself. You are so spectacular! I am sure you would like to show these screenshots to your friends, family or colleagues."
Do you recognise sentences like these? Then you have almost certainly received the same standard email that circulates worldwide.
Frequently asked questions about sextortion
Questions about the role of bitcoin?
We are a European crypto broker and regularly receive questions about sextortion emails. Do you have questions about how bitcoin works, or why it is used in this scam? Our customer service is happy to help.