I'm afraid I'm being scammed from a KIK chat / Ashley Madiso

[holdenc]

I've been up all night, I think I have fallen prey. I could just be paranoid but I sent a person a private pic of myself. They also have a selfie type pic of me. And they would know I was on Ashley Madison, this is perhaps the most incriminating if they were trying to blackmale me. I know I could be jumping to conclusions, I just felt really suspicious about all this but I kept chatting.. and kept chatting.. only afterwards have I gotten really scared.

They asked some random questions over the course of a few days.. is that your real name (no it's not), how long are you married (12 years), where is your wife now (another state), where do you work (at a software company), A big or small company (medium sized).

I realize the pics I sent all have geocache information. If they locate my house it has my name. With my name they have facebook, linked in, etc.

I already deactivated facebook and changed all my linkedin info. I'm afraid if I deactivate it it might lose track of who has visisted me on linkedin. I changed my ashely madison account info and deleted pics.. again I am afraid to deactivate it, figuring perhaps if I have a history of email with this person it might be helpful later on if it turns out I'm being extorted.

This person did not seem like a foreigner. I think they were probably in my town. In fact she mentioned a bar in my town so very likely was a real person in my town (or a guy impersonating a girl).

I guess what they have is not too teribbley incrimatinating compared to what I have read about.. like videos. It's mainly two sexting pictures not showing my face. They said they wanted a pic though that showed my wedding ring in a compromising position. It was dumb to send that, but I guess thousands of people are dumb all the time when in the middle of a heated chat.

I wonder if I am, what will be the way they would contact me. THe fact they could know where I live if they simply look at the coordinates in the photo they would find my house easily.

I can't calm my paranoia about this. I've been up it's 6:00 AM!

I wonder if I should delete my gmail account also. I would lose a lot but maybe I should do that soon?
ALthough I have a work gmail address that has my name, I dont' know what I can do about that, maybe they could change my name in the system or something.

I wonder if KIK is traceable? Linkedin visits? I know people say don't try and 'get revenge' just ignore a scammer but I would probably at least go to the police and see if it was possible to trace any of these back.

Hope I'm just being really paranoid.

[firefly]

You have here: http://www.scamsurvivors.com/blackmail/#/ a topic with what you need to do in such cases. A complaint to your local police with all the details you have about the scammer is a good option.

[holdenc]

I'm just not sure if I should just proceed as if it's 100% certain I'm going to be blackmailed, or if I am just being paranoid.

This woman I talked to sent some pics of herself that I asked for and I don't think they were stock photos. She mentioned things about my local city like said one night she was going out to a local bar for bar trivia that I know about. ALso that she worked on a street near a popular grocery store. They could still be a scammer, but I guess I'm saying I am pretty sure whoever behind this is local and not from nigeria or the phillipines or somewhere like that.

Also at one point she sort of lost interested in the chatting all together. I chatted her back and asked if she wanted to keep it going and then we did. I just wonder if a scammer would have just kept going up front until they got what they wanted.

Also all they would have is a few pics of me that are clothed with my face, and a few pics that are body parts with no face. I'm not on video thankfully. Not many people would probably recognize the body pics.. only my wife maybe. I told this person I chatted with also I was married but in an open relationship so my wife was OK with me chatting like that online.. which is true. So there is not much leverage there. ALthough it would still be embarassing if they tried to show any of this to my friends or family members.

If I were being blackmailed how long would I expect to wait for someone to contact me? What would be the likely method - phone call? email? contacting my wife or family? A letter in the mail? I deactivated my facebook. Took down my linkedin info. deleted google plus. I have considered changing my phone number and deleting my gmail account pre-emptively.

THis would be a long way to go considering I don't know that I am being blackmailed or anything.. I just know that if this is a scammer, they have my home address, name, phone, probably email. which is horrible.

Of course anyone else I've ever sent a picture to has access to this same info. Everyone I'm friends with on facebook probably has access to this also as all this time my pictures have has my lat/long coordinates for every picture taken! What a horrible feature

[firefly]

In this case, it is better to do anything you can to stop the contact with that person - better safe than sorry. Be careful online - you can never know for sure who is on the other side of the screen and why... but they can find out easy who you are and where you are if you don't know how to protect yourself online.

[holdenc]

Well, I might go ahead and do that.. delete my email and phone.
But they probably know where I work. I can't probably delete my email address there.

I was careful for the most part. I was a little supsicious but I thought.. they don't know my name.. they don't know who I am or where I live.. I'm anonymous. But, then I realized I wasn't because of the phone pic locations.

[SlapHappy]

Do not worry so much about phone pics geo info. We have not not seen that used before, and there is nothing you can do about retrieving the pics anyway. Anyone can google a town name and get bars and other information in order to make you think they live there. This person could be anywhere in the world.
Just follow every single step in the link posted above.

Check out these links to help you get over the scam and understand a blackmailer's mindset.
How Blackmail Scammers Think and Operate The Scam
http://www.scamsurvivors.com/forum/view ... 656#p52656


Closure.When Will This End? How Do Scammers Think? pg13
http://www.scamsurvivors.com/forum/view ... f=3&t=4509

Interview with a blackmail survivor, a member of our website:
http://scamsurvivors.com/podcasts/ Click Playlist button in the upper left of the player. Scroll to podcast #11.

Interview with New Light, a blackmail survivor:
http://scamsurvivors.com/podcasts/ Click Playlist button in the upper left of the player. Scroll to podcast #16.