A worrying trend with blackmail scams.

We’ve always said that we will not help anyone who knowingly continued talking to a scammer when they found out they were underage.  That stand hasn’t changed, and never will do.  I bring this up because of a tactic used by some scammers, where they threaten to tell everyone that the person was on cam with a minor.  Just yesterday I closed down a video account of a scammer that was claiming that the person captured was on cam with a 7 year old.  Imagine seeing that next to your name, and imagine the panic that would go through a person’s mind.  The video is gone, but in it you could clearly see that the person on the other side of the conversation appeared to be very much an adult, not a child as they were claiming.  If that’s not bad enough, if the video’s title is picked up by Google, all people will see is the person’s name and the allegation, not the video proof that it’s a lie.  Luckily it’s a step that the scammers very rarely take these days, preferring to show them the video in Skype instead.  It’s definitely something to be aware of though.