We were threatened with a new ransom extortion message. I haven’t seen this one before, looks like it’s new but already spreading out widely. I’m sharing it here as to remind everyone that even though messages like this can feel scary, they’re fake.
Just look at this:
Your reputation and business are at stake!
We on your behalf in the message your website address relevanssi.com and your contact information (including in social. Networks and messengers) will send:
- on 15,897,318 sites, threats with insults to site owners, US residents, Europeans, LGBT and BLM.
- 790,000 messages to bloggers with threats and insults
- 2 367 896 public figures and politicians (from the USA and Europe) with threats and insults
- 70,000 negative reviews about you and your website relevanssi.com
- 23 467 849 contact forms of sites with threats and insults
- 150,000 emails messages to people with disabilities with threats and insults, many of them will definitely sue you
- 57000 emails of messages to veterans with threats and insults, FOR THIS YOU WILL BE EXACTLY SITTED
Following from all of the above, you will get a lot of losses:
- an abuse from spam house, amazon and many webmasters (for spam, insults and threats) will come to your site relevanssi.com, as a result, your domain will be banned and blacklisted
- people will sue you because you threatened and humiliated them
- in court you will not prove anything, everything will look as if you did it all, MOST YOU WILL GO TO PRISON
- internet will be inundated with negative reviews about you and your website relevanssi.com
- threats and reprisals from BLM and LGBT community members, in fact, these are dangerous community guys
Total: you will lose your business, all your money, you will spend on lawyers and compensation for court decisions, you will go to jail, your life will turn to hell …
We already have everything ready to launch all of the above, but we decided to give you a chance to avoid all this, you can buy off a small amount of money.
Make a payment, transfer 0.39 Bitcoins to this address
1JDYfBMP3vg8TcuFuwSHc1Wop3rREqupC4
We are waiting for the transfer from you until November 27, on Saturday November 28, if payment does not come from you, we will begin to destroy your business and you along with it.
The message is a weird mix of highly specific (exactly 15,897,318 sites, not one more or less) and super vague, as it only mentions our URL and not the name of the product or actually anything specific about us. Clearly it’s just carpet bombing, just replace the URL and blast away.
The threat itself is ridiculous. It’s easy to spoof emails, sure, but it’s very hard to spoof email so that it isn’t clear it’s spoofed. Also just by publishing this threat I’m already undermining it. Also, our email servers are safe enough that a random hacker won’t be sending out any emails that really look like they originate from us. Besides – if all the people who get this extortion message refuse to pay, the internet is going to be flooded with insults and threats so badly it’s going be just absurd and funny.
And the ransom? At the moment, 0.39 Bitcoins is about $7500, and I can assure you Relevanssi business is worth a lot more than that 😉 I’ve kept the full Bitcoin address there. If you ever get extortion messages like this, search for the address, and you’ll probably find out it has been used elsewhere, and you’ll see you’re not alone and many other people are getting exactly the same threats.
So I’m definitely not paying. If you ever get insulted by someone claiming to be from relevanssi.com, that’s not me.