SEXTORTION SCAMS ON THE RISE.

• Position: YOUR LIFE

The latest report from cybersecurity company Symantec shows that extortion scams are on the rise. The company blocked almost 750,000,000 emails of this type in 2019. The time-tested scams are making a comeback with new variations, and sextortion currently is the most-popular technique to use against Internet users.

"We notice a trend of scammers getting more creative. In a typical sextortion message, anonymous blackmailers would say they have visual proof of you watching adult content. Now, they have started including passwords or mobile phone numbers in the subject line to scare their potential victims even more," says Daniel Markuson, a digital privacy specialist at NordVPN.

Symantec's study also found that criminals often translate extortion messages into foreign languages. Markuson notes that "even though a text received from scammers looks real and personal, it usually isn't. Most of the time, those threats are badly translated with Google Translate and sent to thousands of potential victims."

In sextortion scams, fraudsters threaten people to share compromising photos or videos of them watching adult content unless the victims pay a ransom. Sextortion often is carried out through email, social media, or text messages, and the scammers demand payment in cryptocurrencies.

Usually, the extortionists claim that they have installed a program on...