Has anyone dealt with scam emails?

[Nikolas]

I got an email today, and I’m not sure what to do about it.

Basically, it says my computer has been hacked, and unless I pay, all my data will be sent to my friends and everyone in my contacts. I’m pretty sure it’s a scam and they don’t actually have my data, but this is the first time I’ve encountered something like this, so it’s got me a bit worried.

Has anyone else encountered something like this? What did you do with these kinds of emails?

[D.Draker]

10 hours ago, Nikolas said:

I got an email today, and I’m not sure what to do about it.

Basically, it says my computer has been hacked, and unless I pay, all my data will be sent to my friends and everyone in my contacts. I’m pretty sure it’s a scam and they don’t actually have my data, but this is the first time I’ve encountered something like this, so it’s got me a bit worried.

Has anyone else encountered something like this? What did you do with these kinds of emails?

In such cases, I always check the email header first.

Google: how to check email headers.

[D.Draker]

Oh, and probably it's fine to copy-paste it here.

It will contain the sender IP, provider, etc.

[D.Draker]

I was once bombarded by the Russian dating scam emails, from some place called Yfa, Ufa, not sure I remember correctly now.

It happened after I left the on-line dating scene, somewhere in 2010 or so.

So I found the sender with the help of my boys I served in the military, the one that gathered intel.

Then wrote to the sender with the demand to stop. It all stopped. 

[D.Draker]

And cheer up, you're here with us.

[Nikolas]

Oh no, I deleted it right away. It was just a regular Gmail and I didn’t realize I could check anything about the sender.

[Saxon]

11 hours ago, Nikolas said:

Oh no, I deleted it right away. It was just a regular Gmail and I didn’t realise I could check anything about the sender.

So you emptied the bin, too?

[Tripredacus]

If they hacked your computer, why would they send an email to an external site instead of make a message appear on your computer?

[D.Draker]

I remembered, some 5-6 years ago, my ex-GF got an angry email threatening to make her naked photos public, it never happened, that's why I forgot.

Now digging up my memory, the header contained a mass mailing IP from France.  

If I ever got such mail, I could care less, I'd say, go on, publish my pics, I'm proud of 'em. But girls.... it's a totally different story.

To say the least, she was stressed, imagine those fragile early 20ish females.

She never stored her pics on that PC, so yeah I agree, could be just phishing, to look at the reaction.

[D.Draker]

Important to add, both our email accounts were somehow connected to social media! Mine was linked with a famous (at that time) dating site POF.

Her account was used to register on Insta and Facebook, also LinkedIn. Yeah, she was that chatty.

I also have another account, never used to register anywhere, zero spam,