IF YOU RECEIVE A BLACKMAIL EMAIL, PLEASE REDACT THE PERSONAL INFORMATION AND POST IT AS A COMMENT ON THIS THREAD SO THAT OTHERS WHO RECEIVE THE SAME EMAIL CAN FIND IT THROUGH GOOGLE.

BLACKMAIL EMAIL SCAMS ARE ALSO SENT VIA SMS (TEXT) AND PHYSICAL MAIL. REGARDLESS OF THE METHOD, THEY ARE SPAM AND THE POST BELOW GIVES YOU INFORMATION AND ADVICE ABOUT WHAT TO DO.

Blackmail email scams have that name because they started out as emails, however they have also been sent out via SMS and physical mail. If you are reading this because you have received one of these emails and you’re worried, you can stop worrying. The blackmail email scam is an email spam campaign that is sent out to thousands of email addresses at a time, the emails are completely false. In many cases, the emails will contain some sort of privileged information about you such as your name, part or all of your phone number, and your password. The data they use is collected from data breaches. Some emails may also include a screenshot of your desktop. The screenshots are acquired through malware often distributed through cracked software. If you received a screenshot of your desktop you should run a virus scan with something like Malwarebytes.The emails may also look like they were sent from your own email address due to email spoofing. You can use the service Have I Been Pwned? to see if you are in any publicly known data breaches. If you receive an email that contains a password that you currently use, you should immediately change that. Current recommended password guidelines say that you should use a different, complex password for every account. You can generate and save passwords using a password manager for convenience. You should also be using two factor authentication using an app like Google Authenticator instead of receiving codes through SMS.

Here are some news articles about this scam. Here is a story from Brian Krebs, and here is a story from the New York Times.

Below in the comments section are a few examples, but if you receive an email that is similar but not the same as the examples you see, that does not matter and does not mean that the email is real. The spammers constantly change up their templates in order to bypass spam filters, so it’s normal to receive an email that hasn’t yet been posted online.