I received a Bitcoin extortion email. It doesn’t look like spam. Should I send money or call the police?

Alarm.

When encountering this kind of situation, most ordinary people are panicked and don’t know what to do.

First of all, the crime of extortion needs to meet a specific behavioral structure, that is, threatening others, thereby causing the other party to have a fear, and the other party then disposes of the property based on this fear, and the perpetrator or a third party obtains the property as a result. , and finally, the victim suffered property losses.

Although he received the threat from the email and developed a fear, he did not dispose of the property in the end. The person who sent the email anonymously did not obtain the property due to reasons other than himself, so his behavior constituted the crime of extortion. Attempt. In response to this situation, the police should be reported to the public security organs in time.

Once something like this happens, don’t panic or be afraid, communicate with the people around you, and report to the police in a timely manner.

Recommendations for user email security protection:

1. Improve personal security awareness. When sending and receiving emails, confirm whether the source is reliable. Do not click or copy URLs in emails at will, and do not download easily. It is recommended not to open attachments from unknown sources to strangers’ emails.

2. Try not to log in to email in uncontrolled environments, such as computers in Internet cafes and other people’s computers.

3. Ensure the security of the environment for sending and receiving emails and logging in to the terminal system (PC, mobile phone, PAD, etc.), promptly upgrade and update and perform vulnerability patch repairs, install terminal security protection software and promptly upgrade and open monitoring to ensure that emails The environment for sending and receiving is safe.

4. The email password must use a strong password (for example: the password is longer than 12 characters and must be a combination of numbers, English uppercase and lowercase letters, and special characters), and the password must be changed regularly; the password must not be used with other services Mix it up.

5. If you use an email client, ensure the security of the client installation program, configure email sending and receiving according to the encrypted link method supported by the email server (such as SSL), and do not use plain text protocols to send and receive emails; For the volume where the client data files are located, it is recommended to use volume encryption (such as Bitlocker). 6. If you use a browser to send and receive emails, you need to use the HTTPS protocol to log in to the mailbox, rather than using HTTP to log in.

7. Standardize email signatures in accordance with organizational regulations.

8. Email addresses should not be spread randomly to reduce the possibility of attackers finding the entrance to the attack; if the email address must be disclosed, the @ symbol can be replaced with other symbols to avoid being crawled and recognized by crawlers and becoming spam. and attack mass mailing targets.