Expert guidance and digital forensics services to help you stay safe, protect your privacy, and take control when facing online extortion threats.
The Rise of Email Extortion Threats
As the threat landscape evolves, email blackmail threats are increasing by leaps and bounds. The 2025 Global Anti-Scam Alliance ‘State of Scams’ report surveyed 46,000 people around the globe. They discovered that 57% of adults encountered a scam in the past year. 23% of them had money stolen.
Unfortunately, anyone can be targeted by these schemes. Whether you are an employee, CEO, or executive, you may fall prey to an email extortion threat in the future. Many reports demonstrate that scammers pretend to have confidential digital content of a victim to initiate email extortion scams.
These fraudsters deceive victims by using several methods, including intimidation, threats, and high-pressure tactics. They also misuse AI tools to scale and improve their schemes and request specific payment methods to cover their tracks.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) revealed that bitcoin email extortion has taken a big jump in recent years. According to the Barracuda 2025 Email Threats Report, 12% of malicious PDF documents or attachments involve bitcoin sextortion scams.
The important question is what to do if you get an extortion email. First and foremost, don’t panic. In many cases, the extortionists establish a false claim, and they don’t have any compromising digital content of you. Even if they do, recovery is possible with the right approach.
Keep reading to learn more about email extortion and blackmail scams, common types of email extortion scams, and what to do if you get an extortion email. We’ll explore a real case study to visualize what these schemes look like, discuss how to check if the threat is real, and provide expert suggestions to prevent future blackmail emails.
Understanding Email Extortion and Blackmail Scams
Email extortion and blackmail scams involve intimidating, coercing, or blackmailing the recipient into making a ransom payment. Scammers claim that they possess sensitive information about the victim and will divulge that information unless a ransom is paid. In 2024, SingCERT received 33 extortion email reports from individuals and companies.
When orchestrating an email blackmail scam, fraudsters often send threatening messages to innumerable individuals, including employees, CEOs, executives, and more. The email contains embarrassing information that can be published if the victim doesn’t pay a ransom, usually in Bitcoin, to remain anonymous.
The extortion email may include the victim’s password to establish credibility and motivate them to fulfill the extortion request. Many members of Carnegie Mellon University reported receiving bulk emails as part of an enormous email blackmail scam. The affected individuals received the following message: “I’m aware that <password> is your password.”
In addition, the email claimed to have a compromised video that may be released publicly if the victim is reluctant to pay a ransom in cryptocurrency within 24 hours.
Social engineering and technological advancements are the biggest rising factors leading to email extortion scams. Extortionists increasingly leverage Generative AI, deepfakes, and voice cloning to achieve their malicious gains.
What are the Common Types of Email Extortion Scams?
Email extortion scams are rising in prevalence due in part to sophisticated hacking techniques. Modern AI-powered extortion tactics make their email messages more persuasive and linguistically sound, unlike traditional methods that crafted emails with grammatical errors.
Although adversaries utilize sophisticated techniques to make their attacks unnoticed, several red flags or warning signs can help you identify targeted attacks among mass emails. You will know these warning signs in the upcoming sections.
1. Sextortion Scam
Sextortion, or sexual extortion, is one of the most common online scams. It is an act of blackmail where bad actors threaten to share a sexual or nude image, audio, or video if the victim doesn’t pay.
In this scam, the perpetrator pretends to be a potential partner and shows fake romantic interest in the target on social media websites, dating apps, and gaming platforms. They use flattery or compliments to lure a victim or win their trust. Once the victim accepts the online interaction, they are asked to expose themselves on a webcam.
In many sextortion emails, the perpetrator gathers numerous accounts from around the internet and sends an email claiming to have access to such content. Regardless of the validity of their claims, they use fear and urgency to push their targets to comply.
2. Extortion Phishing Email
Extortion phishing emails contain a suspicious link or malicious attachment that installs malware on the victim’s machine. The extortionist intends to record a victim visiting adult sites. After that, the criminal coerces their target to pay by threatening to post the videos online or reveal them to friends, family members, or professional colleagues.
According to Hayley King, Detective Chief Inspector of the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB), “Criminals will go to great lengths to make these types of extortion scams more convincing, including using a leaked password or home address in the phishing email to make it seem genuine.”
3. Deepfake Threat
Deepfake, a blend of ‘deep learning’ and ‘fake’, is a modern technique used by hackers to generate convincing hoax images, audios, and videos. Machine learning algorithms help cybercriminals create events or people that didn’t happen or don’t exist.
The bad guys use deepfakes for nefarious gains. For example, they mislead the public by propagating propaganda or false information.
4. Data Extortion Scam
In this type of scam, threat actors send extortion letters to the targeted corporate executives. They threaten executives to pay a ransom or face the consequences. Upon denial, sensitive information will be released on the internet or sent to competitors.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released a warning about the “BianLian Group” that targeted corporate executives by sending extortion letters.
5. BEC Scams
Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams target specific individuals in organizations, such as executives. According to VIPRE Email Threat Trends Report 2025: Q2, BEC accounted for 42% of scam emails overall. In this report, BEC attacks involved multiple affected roles, including:
- School Head – 2%
- IT Personnel – 3%
- Human Resource – 4%
- Director/Manager – 9%
- CEO/Executive – 82%
What to Do If You Receive an Extortion Email
If you receive an extortion email, don’t panic. Stay calm and respond wisely with patience. Our experts suggest the following measures.
- Minimize communication with the perpetrator. Don’t engage the perpetrator with either willingness or contempt. Instead, use delay tactics to buy yourself time. Avoid blocking, as this may delete evidence and drive them to make good on their threats.
- Change the compromised password. If their email mentions one of your passwords, you should update it immediately. Enable Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) to enhance your online security past your password.
- Don’t pay the ransom. You should never pay the hackers. Paying a ransom does not guarantee that you will get your sensitive information or data back. FBI, NSA, and CISA all strongly advise the victim organizations not to pay a ransom.
- Mark extortion email as spam. Сybersecurity firms suggest that the best response to the extortion email is to mark it as spam and delete it immediately. Doing so will discourage the scammers and their malicious campaigns.
- Run anti-spam tools. The reliable anti-spam or spam filtering tool will help you detect extortion emails. The system will automatically identify incoming extortion emails from marketers or attackers.
- Report to your law enforcement agency. Preserve all the evidence or screenshots and immediately report the email extortion threat to your nearest law enforcement agency, usually the police.
How to Handle Email Blackmail at Work?
A single mistake on your part can harm the entire IT environment of your organization. Therefore, you must take wise steps to safeguard your corporate digital assets.
- Report the incident. Immediately report the email blackmail incident to your IT department. They will help you get out of this deplorable situation and spread awareness to the rest of the company.
- Don’t forward the email. Forwarding email blackmail can help scammers propagate their malicious campaigns. In addition, forwarding can put your colleagues and organization at risk.
- Encourage other employees to report these emails. Let other employees know about the extortion email. The collaborative effort will help get rid of the menace of email blackmail threats.
- Deploy a simulated phishing campaign. From the management side, your organization must carry out simulated phishing programs periodically. Doing so can help spot weaknesses in the organization’s current security posture.
- Initiate security awareness and training programs. The organization must initiate security awareness and training programs for employees to educate them regarding email extortion scams. This program must answer the question: “What to do if you get an extortion email?”
When Is the Threat Real? How to Verify Legitimacy
A large portion of extortion emails are fake or based on fabricated information. Nevertheless, it’s better to be safe than sorry. To check the legitimacy of an extortion email, you need to understand some warning signs.
Lack of Real Evidence
Legitimate sextortion threats may attach an explicit video, image, or screenshot of your actual messages. On the other hand, scammers can acquire your sensitive data, such as usernames or passwords, through data breaches. They may use this information to make their threat seem legitimate — but if they don’t provide proof of the content they claim to have, it’s likely a fake.
Generic Messages
You can check the authenticity of an extortion email by copying a suspicious or unique section of the blackmail email into a search engine. In the event of a common extortion email threat, the search engine will find similar or identical wording utilized in other reported emails.
Claims of Webcam Hacking
Many scammers claim to record a webcam when someone has visited adult sites. Such a claim is unrealistic unless they provide real footage or tangible proof. To err on the side of caution, it’s best to run a malware scan to see if your device has truly been compromised.
Real-Life Example: A Common Sextortion Email
International security agencies like the National Anti-Scam Center often report incidents of extortion emails. However, it’s hard to prove that scammers really do have access to the victim’s computer or webcam.
The following screenshots demonstrate the real-world example of a sextortion email. Source: Australia’s National Anti-Scam Centre
