DANGER: Is that 'hot babe' on Skype a sextortionist? North Yorkshire police have issued a general warning after three men in the York area fell victim to sextortionists. Someone posing as a woman called Cathy Wong befriended each of the victims on Facebook before asking them to Skype her. During the online chat session, she enticed each of them into performing an indecent act, …
Students.... seriously??? Yeh 'cause they always have a handy stash of £3k under the sofa to pay off dodgy blackmail fees...
Some of them put a good amount of effort in on dating sites to come across as a good UK citizen only to have their skype location as Lagos when they want to chat... Come on - it's the detail that counts in this small and mostly pointless exercise of trying to catch out desperate westerners...
These are probably overseas students who have been scoped out in advance as being from richer parents and who are much more likely to be punished by parents rather than just simply embarrassed if their videos are distributed on-line.
As noted below, the initial approach is via Facebook to get to know the mark - and the women is referred to with an asian name. I think this is quite a sophisticated scam and has probably netted them quite a few people ready to pay up - as opposed to the three listed here who refused.
I'm guessing lonely people, or people that experiment... there are a lot of people that suffer from depression, so it's the classic befriending sting.
Sextortion only works if you give a shit, the victims should just tell them to go for it and put it on youtube. Is there a sextortion category on youtube? No probably not, as I expect they would just take it down anyway.
Sometimes she gets naked first. Sometimes they record one half of the session and leave her bit out.
Sometimes they leave her out and then claim your partner was 13 years old. It doesn't matter that it wasn't true; a video of you wanking in front of a child will get you judged in the court of opinion and potentially ruin your life. It's easier and safer to pay, if it's not too much.
I hate all the victim-blaming that goes on here. This is a confidence trick. It relies on taking the time to build up trust.
Their real downfall was missing the fact that meeting through Facebook meant the "hot babe" already knew their real name and exactly who to send embarrassing video to. If they'd just been showing their junk to people on Omegle or similar they'd have been fairly safe.
I thought this was about Skype not Farcebook. Do you use Skype? Ever since M$ took over (and this is almost certainly just a coincidence) I've had 2 or 3 of these per week, always women, usually accompanied by a photo of a model, usually in a bikini and frequently not reflecting the indigenous population of the location that Skype gives for them. Mostly the contact request just say "please add me as a contact" occasionally they've done a little more work.
Now I'm probably what would be considered as a prime candidate for falling a for "a pretty girl routine", ie 50s bloke. But I'm not stupid enough to believe that some random "babe" from the other side of the planet is about to fall head over heals in lust with (I've a wife who loves me, lets face it here the goal is lust). Besides there are channels where its easy to meet people to play lust games in rather more anonymous ways.
I'm on skype 24/7 ita what my work uses for communication
My profile must be set to private or
something as I almost NEVER get requests to connect from strangers.
My experience goes back 4 years. 99.99% of my skype usage is work related or with people I used to work with.
I have enough familiarity with Skype to know about the random contacts from "women", although I'm not a regular user. But this article says "Someone posing as a woman called Cathy Wong befriended each of the victims on Facebook before asking them to Skype her."
I don't know what you do with your Skype profile, but mine's publicly available, and I get essentially zero spam to it. Can't remember the last time I had a contact request from someone I didn't know. I think it happens a few times a year, and the frequency certainly hasn't gone up significantly since Microsoft bought it - probably the reverse if anything.
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Presumably there is no need to actually post the offendings pics, on the first ask some gullible people will send the money. (these people are most valuable and can be sold to other scammers)
Those that don't pay are then threatened and some of those will pay. (these can also be sold but not for as much)
The rest you can forget about, they are not bothered or there are probably pictures of their winkies adorning the internet already and they probably like the idea of more.
It makes more sense not to publish the non-payers because they may be more receptive to blackmail attempts in the future as their circumstances have changed (ie they have more to lose)
They aren't interested in posting anything. They are fishing, if you bite and send money they'll ask for more until you wake up and tell them to sod off, if you don't bite they'll just drop it. They are working percentages and don't have time to chase refusers. Have you ever heard of anyone's todger actually being posted online from one of these scams?
Some stranger contacts you and asks you to have a wank in front of your wephone, webcam to which you agree, and then you are surprised to find out that you've just been stung...
I can understand that old people, unaware people are getting stung by the fake Microsoft Call Center scams but this is on a whole other level.
Hmmm. You've just given me an idea for how to respond next time the "Microsoft" people phone.
Not had one this year, was getting 2 a week at one point last year. Now they often claim to be from "Your internet service provider, and we've noticed a virus on your connection". The last one put the phone down on me before I could tell him to sod off, just from the weary and cynical way I said, "are you?" when he claimed to be from Microsoft.
> They failed to obey the first rule of digital imagery
> upstairs or downstairs, but never both
Where is the romance in knocking one out without any eye contact?
Next you'll say it's a bad idea to disclose personal details as you chat to get to know one another.
If this continues, the Internet web chat will just end up with meaningless, anonymous sex acts....
I suspect that Nigerian scams and these sorts are obvious on purpose. As a scammer you don't people who have the sense to see the con coming, or calling the police so you make it as dumb and obvious as possible - it gets rid of all the timewasters. So make the con big, stupid and obvious and when you get a bite you know you've caught a very gullible person.
I think scamming is a whole ecosystem, with entries at all levels of gullibility.
At the shallowest end of the clue pool, you get classic 419ers (yes, they're still in business - after all, a significant number of people received their very first email yesterday). This Facebook/Skype combo is a step up from that. At the deep end, you get what happened to Sony.
And in between, there's room for thousands of parasitic scum feeding on people of virtually all levels of intelligence, including a great many who delude themselves that they're too smart to fall for anything...
Think of it like - spiders, cats, badgers and people are all predators, but they prey on entirely different things. So the ecosystem has room for all of them.
The larger issue for me is that we seem to have bred a generation that are almost incapable of "pulling" unless it is online, I know several families where the teenage boys only seem to be able to meet girls via Arsefaceplace and other antisocial media, it may be the same for girls but I have no real knowledge as its the boys that seem to talk to me about it - guess its a bonded male thing - I have been around them a long time and seem to be someone they look to for calm rationality (ha! they dont know me lol)
They don't seem able to develop the skills to front up to someone in a public place and see where it leads. Someone once told me it was my personality not my looks that attracted them, based on observing me in various "social venues" around. How many of todays generation will that happen to?
"Someone once told me it was my personality not my looks that attracted them, based on observing me in various "social venues" around."
Congrats for finally being pulled even though you are ugly. You are confusing teenagers with people in their 20/30s, who would typically form relationships with people at work, or front up as you so nicely put it.
"Someone once told me it was my personality not my looks that attracted them, based on observing me in various "social venues" around. How many of todays generation will that happen to?"
Probably quite a lot - I know a good few people who have paired up from chatting on forums and in IRC, etc. Hell, I've done it. I have a physique like a corpse that's been left in a river for a week, too!
Steven R
As posted by others, the threats are not hugely credible, but they don't need to be. There was a BBC news article last month mentioning a socially awkward 14 year old boy who killed himself due to falling foul of one of these rackets and believing their threats that they would 'ruin his life', very sad.
Delete Facebook account.
Step two snap out of it. No babe from the interwibbles is looking for sex with you. If you're good looking enough, you don't need the net for women.
Step three never, never accept invites from babes you may not know on Skype, Yahoo etc. They may be looking for something in your trousers, but not your johnson...
Rule number one: No woman is interested in seeing your todger. Not a one. This has been verified multiple times with multiple women. They all agree, dick pics are not of interest, nor a source of arousal to them. The only people who think they are...are the owners of said dicks.
In case of confusion, refer to rule one, above.
Ignorance of rule number one will lead to tears...or worse.
That is all.
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