Mass Production Blackmail and Fraud

Back in the days of Usenet, I read the following message:

I believe that it is okay to have sex before marriage unlike some people. This way you can expirence different types of sex and find the right man or woman who satifies you in bed. I you wait until marriage then what if your mate can not satisfy you, then you are stuck with him. Please write me and give me your thoughts on this. You can also tell me about some of your ways to excite a woman because I have not yet found the right man to satisfy me.

The message is read by thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of men. A hundred or so take up the implied offer and email responses. They get suitably enticing emails in response, the same emails for all of them, with only the names changed. They continue the correspondence. Eventually they receive a request for fifty dollars — and a threat to pass on the correspondence to the man's wife if the money is not paid. The ones who are not married ignore it; some of the married ones pay. The responsible party has obtained a thousand dollars or so at a cost very close to zero. Mass production blackmail.¹

One of my students suggested a simpler explanation. The name and email address attached to the message belonged not to the sender but to someone the sender disliked. Whether or not he was correct, that form of information warfare has been used frequently enough online to have acquired its own nickname: "Joe job." It is not a new technique–the classical version is a phone number on the wall of a men's room. But the net greatly expands the audience.

That was many years ago. More recently …

Waiting for the Payment

From: David Friedman

To: David Friedman

Date: 3/7/23, 7:20 AM

Hello!

Have you recently noticed that I have e-mailed you from your account?

Yes, this simply means that I have total access to your device.

For the last couple of months, I have been watching you.

Still wondering how is that possible? Well, you have been infected with malware originating from an adult website that you visited. You may not be familiar with this, but I will try explaining it to you.

With help of the Trojan Virus, I have complete access to a PC or any other device.

This simply means I can see you at any time I wish to on your screen by simply turning on your camera and microphone, without you even noticing it. In addition, I have also got access to your contacts list and all your correspondence.

You may be asking yourself, "But my PC has an active antivirus, how is this even possible? Why didn't I receive any notification?" Well, the answer is simple: my malware uses drivers, where I update the signatures every four hours, making it undetectable, and hence keeping your antivirus silent.

I have a video of you wanking on the left screen, and on the right screen - the video you were watching while masturbating.

Wondering how bad could this get? With just a single click of my mouse, this video can be sent to all your social networks, and e-mail contacts.

I can also share access to all your e-mail correspondence and messengers that you use.

All you have to do to prevent this from happening is - transfer bitcoins worth $1450 (USD) to my Bitcoin address (if you have no idea how to do this, you can open your browser and simply search: "Buy Bitcoin").

My bitcoin address (BTC Wallet) is: 1KRBGGiiVLq5zNkBtp5LYnKWtD3tSKdMSJ

After receiving a confirmation of your payment, I will delete the video right away, and that's it, you will never hear from me again.

You have 2 days (48 hours) to complete this transaction.

Once you open this e-mail, I will receive a notification, and my timer will start ticking.

Any attempt to file a complaint will not result in anything, since this e-mail cannot be traced back, same as my bitcoin id.

I have been working on this for a very long time by now; I do not give any chance for a mistake.

If, by any chance I find out that you have shared this message with anybody else, I will broadcast your video as mentioned above.

Problems with the Claim

Is the claim in the email true?

Assume that the target does in fact masturbate to video porn — the email is being sent to lots of people, some of whom do. He can check how much of him his computer camera covers and conclude that, unless he masturbates standing, his doing it would not be in the camera’s view.

A little research should tell him that the fact that the message appears to come from his email address does not show that the sender controls his computer. The lack of any more specific evidence of access to his computer, such as the text of a few recent emails, suggests that the threat is bogus, is being sent to lots of people and not based on actual control of their computers.

But if the email goes to enough people, some of them won’t think of those arguments, will believe it.

Is it a believable threat?

In order for the scam to work, the target has to believe not only that the videos exist but that they are a threat to him, enough of a threat to be worth $1450 to try to prevent. That requires that the videos contain believable evidence of behavior that would be seriously shaming.

They don’t. Even if the target did not masturbate to video porn it would be easy to forge evidence that he did. Given the present level of deep fake technology, a video of someone masturbating isn’t much evidence that he masturbated. Further, the fact that someone masturbates is not shaming, since it is something that most men and many women do. The threat depends on the claim that he was masturbating to some particularly objectionable porn, perhaps a rape scene. Showing that would require a single video that showed both the screen with the porn running and the masturbating viewer watching it, which would require a camera pointed at the computer screen, not a camera in the computer. Since the blackmailer has no way of showing recipients of his (imaginary, but the target doesn’t know that) video that it shows the target masturbating to the video porn, the target is in no more danger than from blackmailing letters containing claims which could be produced without bothering with the purported tech.

But if the email goes to enough people …

Japanese Version

A new type of malware infects PCs using file-share sites and publishes the user's net history on a public website before demanding a fee for its removal.

…

It targets those downloading illegal copies of games in the Hentai genre, an explicit form of anime.

…

Masquerading as a game installation screen, it requests the PC owner's personal details.

It then takes screengrabs of the user's web history and publishes it online in their name, before sending an e-mail or pop-up screen demanding a credit card payment of 1500 yen (£10) to "settle your violation of copyright law" and remove the webpage. (2010 news story)

The Tale of the Four Little Pigs

The year is 1995, the place Cornell University. Four freshmen have compiled a collection of misogynist jokes entitled "75 Reasons Why Women (Bitches) Should Not Have Freedom of Speech" and sent copies to their friends. The collection reaches someone who finds it offensive and proceeds to distribute it to many other people who share that view, producing a firestorm of controversy inside and outside the university. The central question is whether creating such a list and using email to transmit it is an offense that ought to be punished or a protected exercise of free speech.

Eventually, Cornell announces its decision. The students have violated no university rules and so will be subject to no penalties. They have, however, recognized the error of their ways:

"… in addition to the public letter of apology they wrote that was printed by the Cornell Daily Sun on November 3, 1995, the students have offered to do the following:

        Each of them will attend the "Sex at 7:00" program sponsored by Cornell Advocates for Rape Education (CARE) and the Health Education Office at Gannett Health Center.  This program deals with issues related to date and acquaintance rape, as well as more general issues such as gender roles, relationships and communication.

        Each of them has committed to perform 50 hours of community service.  If possible, they will do the work at a non-profit agency whose primary focus relates to sexual assault, rape crisis, or similar issues. Recognizing that such agencies may be reluctant to have these students work with them, the students will perform the community service elsewhere if the first option is not available.

        The students will meet with a group of senior Cornell administrators to apologize in person and to express regret for their actions and for the embarrassment and disruption caused to the University.

      (public statement by Barbara L. Krause, Judicial Administrator)

There are at least two ways to interpret that outcome. One is that Ms Krause is telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Cornell imposed no penalty on the students, they imposed an entirely voluntary penalty on themselves.

The alternative interpretation starts with the observation that university administrators have a lot of ways of making life difficult for students.  By publicly announcing that the students had broken no rules and were subject to no penalty, while privately making it clear to the students that if they planned to remain at Cornell they would be well advised to "voluntarily" penalize themselves, Cornell engaged in a successful act of hypocrisy, publicly maintaining their commitment to free speech while covertly punishing students for what they said.

Someone who preferred the second interpretation thought up a novel way of supporting it. An email went out during Thanksgiving break to thousands of Cornell students, staff, and faculty, 21,132 of them according to its authors.

--------------------------

CONFIDENTIAL

I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to the many faculty members who advised me regarding the unfortunate matter of the "75 Reasons" letter that was circulated via electronic mail. Your recommendations for dealing with the foul-mouthed "four little pigs" (as I think of them) who circulated this filth was both apposite and prudent.

Now that we have had time to evaluate the media response, I think we can congratulate ourselves on a strategy that was not only successful in defusing the scandal, but has actually enhanced the reputation of the university as a sanctuary for those who believe that "free speech" is a relative term that must be understood to imply acceptable limits of decency and restraint--with quick and severe punishment for those who go beyond those limits and disseminate socially unacceptable sexist slurs.

I am especially pleased to report that the perpetrators of this disgusting screed have been suitably humiliated and silenced, without any outward indication that they were in fact disciplined by us. Clearly, it is to our advantage to place malefactors in a position where they must CENSOR THEMSELVES, rather than allow the impression that we are censoring them.

…

Yours sincerely

Barbara L. Krause Judicial Administrator

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The letter was not, of course, written by Barbara Krause, as anyone attentive enough to check the email address could have figured out. It was written, and sent, by an anonymous group calling themselves OFFAL--Online Freedom Fighters Anarchist Liberation. The letter was a satire and an effective one, giving a believable and unattractive picture of what its authors suspected Ms Krause's real views were. It was also a fraud; some readers would never realize that she was not the real author.

Some recipients not only believed the letter, they agreed with it and said so. Since OFFAL had used an email address that they controlled, those answers went back to them. OFFAL produced a second email, containing the original forgery, an explanation of what they were doing, and a selection of responses.

I happen to support your actions and the resolution of this incident, but put into the wrong hands, this memo could perhaps be used against you.

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Thank god you sent this memo--something with a little anger and fire--something that speaks to the emotion and not just the legalities. I hope you are right in stating that what went on behind the scenes was truly humiliating for "them".

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I agree with what your memo states about the "four little pigs" (students who embarrassed the entire Cornell community), but I don't think I was one of the people really intended for your confidential memo. … Great Job in the handling of a most sensitive issue.

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The authors of the list have received richly-deserved humiliation

Their summary:

We believe that ridicule is a more powerful weapon than bombs or death threats. And we believe that the Internet is the most powerful system ever invented for channeling grass-roots protests and public opinion in the face of petty tyrants who seek to impose their constipated values on everyday citizens who merely want to enjoy their constitutionally protected liberties.

It is hard not to have some sympathy for the perpetrators. They were making a defensible argument in an ingenious and effective way. But at the same time they, like the purveyors of other sorts of propaganda, were combining a legitimate argument with a dishonest one, and it was the latter that depended on their ingenious use of modern communications technology.

The correct point was that Cornell's actions could plausibly be interpreted as hypocritical, attacking free speech while pretending to support it. The dishonest argument was the implication that the responses they received provided support for that interpretation. The eight replies that OFFAL selected consisted of six supporting the original email, one criticizing it, one doing neither. If that were a random selection of responses it would be impressive evidence for their view of what had happened — but we have no reason to think the selection was random. All it showed was that about half a dozen people out of more than twenty thousand supported the idea of covert punishment, which tells us very little about whether that was what was really happening.

What I find interesting about the incident is that it demonstrates a form of information warfare made practical by the nature of the net–very low transaction costs, anonymity, no face to face contact. Considered as parody, it could have been done with old technology. As fraud, a way of tricking people into revealing their true beliefs by pretending that they were revealing them to someone who shared them, it could have been done with old technology, although not as easily. But as mass production fraud, a way of fooling thousands of people in order to get a few of them to reveal their true beliefs, it depended on the existence of email.

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1. For an old, but fictional, version, see Stout, Rex. 1948. “And Be a Villain.”.