recovery and reassurance

[dk138]

I guess I'm that unlucky 1 out of 1,000. Like an idiot, I paid, though I did take down all my social media immediately. About two weeks went by without hearing anything, but then they uploaded the photos and started messaging some friends of mine. I didn't respond in any way. I don't know why they went through with it, maybe I seemed more scared and desperate than other people. (This was around January-February.)

It's been about a month since I've heard anything, but emotionally, I'm not recovering well. Knowing that even though I ignored them for weeks, they still tried, makes me think this person is more committed than the usual scammer. I'm probably going to delete this post soon.

[SlapHappy]

You should leave this post up. Sometimes people do get unlucky and get a real bastard of a scammer, or a stupid one trying to get money from someone he knows will not pay, instead of just moving on and playing better odds with new potential victims. And just because they messaged your friends does not mean they actually had the video or shared it, unless your friends specifically said they saw your video. It may have been just the scammer's ploy to make you come back online and threaten you hoping you would pay. They do this all the time, "Tell Bob to message me, I have news for him." This is typical in a lot of cases.

Just give it another month off all social media and make brand new accounts, using all new email addresses, and keep your phone number off of them, or change that too. None of them keep going forever. He just needs to get the message drilled into his head that he is only hurting himself bothering you and neglecting his "job."

This is important. If you reopened even one of your social media accounts within a month, the scammer may have been encouraged by that, and continued the scam.
Did you go to http://blackmailscams.com, read the advice, fill the scammer form, and follow every single step to the letter?
There you will receive the very latest steps to protect yourself and help warn others of your scammer as well.

[dk138]

Thanks SlapHappy. Unfortunately, I don't have a way of filling out the form, as I've deleted almost all the accounts and text messages that they used to communicate. I only found this place a day or two ago, wish I had found it immediately.

[SlapHappy]

At this point, since you no longer have all the scammer details, we have sent you instructions to get the steps. We do not penalize people in your situation because info is lost. However, we do encourage scammer reporting as it saves others, and we protect the victim as well by making all posts anonymous.

[SlapHappy]

Back here in this topic I talked about OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) and the problems of giving constant reassurance to members with this disorder on this website and in general.
viewtopic.php?f=0&t=4509&p=146972&hilit=OCD#p146972

Today, I've found a woman who has a YouTube channel with videos that help explain what is going on inside the heads of people with OCD. She seems to have some good advice on OCD recovery. Perhaps members or other persons struggling with getting over their scam while also having OCD can be helped by checking them out. You can view her videos on her channel here:
ALI GREYMOND / YOUHAVEOCD https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1qeEI ... pYXUDuADIw


ScamSurvivors are not psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, or any other medical professionals. We have no affiliation with this YouTube site. We do have 35 years of experience dealing will all kinds of victims from all over the world, so we know the emotional and psychological toll that getting scammed can cause. If you are psychologically struggling to the point that it is interfering with or causing huge problems in your personal life, we recommend that you seek professional help for that.

Our members have described how they got over their scam in this topic and they have given their own reassurances and perspectives about their own scam. How about you? How did you recover? We would like to hear about it.

[SlapHappy]

From a recent blackmail form.

It’s been about two months now and I am still avoiding social
media. I am still in fear that these images can be released at anytime. I
am still dealing with the stress and don’t know who to trust. I still am
beating myself up over this whole situation. I just need advice and help
moving on. How often do people get tricked into sending nudes? How often do
the scammers get caught or bluff? Any advice would be good.

How often do people get tricked into sending nudes? For people in the habit of taking their private parts online with them, they will eventually run into a scammer.
How often do the scammers get caught or bluff? Get caught? 99.9% of never. Bluff? 99.9% of the time.

How about this advice and help?

Have you read all 48 pages of "recovery and reassurrance?"
How about listening to podcasts 11 and 16? http://scamsurvivors.com/podcasts
Do all of this, and call me in the morning...

[nebelwerferbattery]

I was scammed about 3 weeks ago and I only came across this site a few days back. While I've gone dark on the internet (deactivating social media), and there has been no contact from the scammer(s), I can't shake off the feeling that the scammer might have posted my picture somewhere online. This stupidly curious brain of mine started searches on adult sites like pornhub for my name - I didn't find anything relating to me but I did see a bunch of videos which looked like extortion videos like "<name> is jerking off". The profile of the posters was based in Phillipines. This makes me really worried. From the accent of my scammer 3 weeks back..they seemed to be from the Phillipines too.

Perhaps the scammers used pornhub instead of youtube for link creation for greater shock value? They do not have a video of me - just one picture...so I'm really struggling here.

[Wayne]

We do point out that the scammers may use other sites, and explain how to get them removed.

Some sites will only allow flagging of videos by members, so you may need to register in order to flag the video. If there is no flag button, find the site's contact email address and write them a polite email explaining the situation and asking that the video be removed.

We could never cover every site individually as you can imagine. In most cases the scammer doesn't upload the video anywhere, but if and when you do see any, it's easy enough to report them so long as you point out it's a sextortion video and most sites are pretty good if a little slow in responding.

[nebelwerferbattery]

I guess I am being overly paranoid. I have had no contact from my scammers in 20 days. A couple of my friends who I'd asked on facebook to keep a lookout have reported nothing. I had a pretty good day yesterday in terms of not thinking about the incident, but today I couldn't get my mind off it - and I ended up searching my name on all manner of sites - including 4chan and pornhub - nothing relating to me turned up so that's good.

The best way I've noticed to get on track is to get busy with your day to day life and believe - as the moderators/admins have mentioned that the scammers do not keep your images/videos for upload onto the internet. In my case my scammers have an image and not a video. My brain tells me that it is extremely unlikely for the scammer to post anything on the general internet/to my contacts, but it's taking time for my subconscious to accept that. Hopefully, time can address that.

[hopefullywillhelp]

It's now been a full month since I was hit with the webcam blackmail scam/sextortion/sextortion and just as others have described, I feel better about it pretty much everyday. Nothing has happened as far as I can tell and the recent Facebook account hacking scandal actually provided me with a great excuse to friends and family as to why my account is deactivated so that is an extra bonus. Thanks again to all who contribute and help keep this site.

It's been over 10 months since my incident and after following all of the detailed guidelines and advice here I have had absolutely nothing happen. I just wanted to post in here again to try and reassure anybody who is/has gone through it recently to try and stay calm and follow the advice.

Thanks again to the admins and all who have shared.