Coffee with a Side of Blackmail

My morning was hijacked by an email.

I was poking through my spam folder when I saw a message that appeared to be from myself but with a different email address. It began like this:

I do know @#$$%% is your passphrases. Lets get directly to purpose. No person has compensated me to investigate about you. You do not know me… 

I replaced the “passphrase” with gobbledygook here, but in the actual email, it was a password I had used in the past. My hackles went up, despite the horrendous grammar (or maybe because of it). The message was long, but the gist was they had downloaded all my contacts, and if I didn’t send them $997 in bitcoin, they would send everyone a video (they’d hacked into my camera) of me watching porn. Aside from my email address and the password, there was no specific information that indicated they knew anything about me. Ridiculous, right? Except…

I have watched internet porn before.

Just like most people probably have, at least once. My heart began hammering in my chest. I tried to laugh it off, but I couldn’t focus on my work. My overactive imagination kept conjuring up what it would feel like if my entire contacts list received that kind of video, how it could terrorize my family, my kids, even ruin my career. Then, I began to get angry. How dare this person hijack my brain with fear, distracting me so that a morning I planned to spend catching up on work was spent rereading the same paragraph over and over because I couldn’t concentrate. How dare they pray on people this way. It’s bullshit, and I’m not putting up with it.

I told Jason, you know, just in case it came to fruition, so he would be prepared. Plus, it always makes me feel less like the world is ending when I share, especially since he didn’t think it was any big deal. Luckily, despite what the malicious message implied, the notion of my watching porn has no chance of ruining my relationship. I went for a run, I calmed down. I feel better about it now.

I’m not the only one getting threatening spam.

I can’t help but think about the people who might be taken in by this, might actually send the money, or might not, but they live in fear of their worst, most embarrassing nightmare coming true. I’m mostly angry at the perpetrator, but part of the reason crap like this even has a chance of working is how horrified we all are that people might actually find out we like sex, that we might like to get creative with it sometimes, do something unconventional (not that watching porn is, at all, unconventional.)

Now that I am done being scared and pissed off, I’m viewing it as a warning shot — to be careful online and to teach my kids to be the same. I am, right now in my head, composing a conversation I need to have with them about suspicious messages and how to handle them, (i.e., tell me so I can help and/or track down and beat the shit out of anyone stalking and scaring my kids.)

It’s less embarrassing when you share.

I debated whether or not to share this story here. It’s embarrassing, but considering how many people watch porn, it’s also ridiculous to be embarrassed about it. Telling you myself, instead of waiting for someone else to out me allows me to be in control, to take back the power that internet trolls are trying to steal for their own gain.

I know there are other people out there who’ve gotten these messages — people who feel scared, annoyed, angry, embarrassed. And when we keep these terrifying situations to ourselves, it eats at us and grows larger and heavier. We lose to the internet terrorists who want us to be scared enough to succumb to their wishes or at least live in fear for a while.

But when we are honest about who were are, when we stand on the mountain and shout, “Yes, I’ve watched internet porn before. So what?” When we let all of our skeletons out of the closet to dance around in broad daylight, no one can impose a fear hold on us. Here’s the other thing you find out when you let out gossipy truths about yourself….in actuality, no one really cares all that much.