Patreon Users Threatened By Ashley Madison Scammers (csoonline.com)

itwbennett writes: "Over the last few days, the group responsible for extortion attempts and death threats against Ashley Madison users has turned to a new set of targets – Patreon users," writes CSO's Steve Ragan. A message sent from the same account used in previous campaigns by the scammers demands a payment of 1 BTC or else the Patreon user will have their personal information exposed. "The [Bitcoin] wallet being used by the group has barely collected anything," says Ragan, "suggesting that after their massive push towards Ashley Madison users, people have stopped falling for their scams."

Comments

The claim to have info they can't have

[geekd]

I'm a Patreon user, and I got the scam email.

They claimed "I have your tax id, tax forms, SSN, DOB, Name, Address, Credit card details and more sensitive data..."

All Patreon has of mine is my credit card info, name, and billing address. The same stuff any online retailer, or anyone who takes payment has. They DO NOT have my tax id, etc.

So it's obviously a scam right from the beginning.

Re:Wait, what? You can see other peoples' wallets?

[Qzukk]

https://blockchain.info/

A bitcoin isn't a "thing". It's an entry in a public ledger that says "wallet X paid wallet Y 0.001BTC". All* the wallets start out at 0 and if you want to see how much money wallet Y has now, you start at the beginning and add all the payments into it and subtract all the payments out of it. Example:

https://blockchain.info/addres...

has 0 BTC balance after receiving 3 payments and making 3 payments (the tiny fraction of a BTC missing each transaction is the fee paid to miners to process it).

As for anonymity, I normally have no way of telling you who 1ENYmn1eCWPa4MFD4VU9wUFqLrzPcqUgaY is. But if one of those payments there was made from an ATM that converts money to BTC (and takes a photo) or one of those debits was sent to a drug dealer who mailed the drugs to the wallet owner's home address, then got busted by the cops who got a customer list, then it could be figured out.