‘Nice location, btw': Threatening scam letters may contain personal information

It was a letter so disturbing and creepy, people receiving it received the email called the police.

It turned out to be a scam, cybercriminals using new technology to personalize their threats in a frightening way.

An NBC10 Boston employee received one such letter via email. It contained a photo of the front of her house.

"I know that visiting… would be a more convenient way to contact. Nice location by the way," the letter read.

The letter had her correct name, address and phone number on it.

“I suggest you read this message carefully….cause we’re about to discuss a deal between you and me and I ain’t playing games," the letter continued.

"That feels both really creepy and really threatening," our producer said.

The sender claimed to have spyware on her computer, saying they had accessed her webcam and had videos of her watching porn online and appearing in compromising videos. None of this was true. And yet, the sender threatened to distribute the videos to her contact list unless she paid a $2,000 ransom in Bitcoin.

"The deeper I read into it, the more and more obvious it became with each sentence that it was a scam," our producer said.

Needham police say they received several reports about this scam and issued a public safety alert Wednesday telling people to delete the emails.

Steve Weisman -- professor at Bentley University and editor of scamicide.com, says this is a more sophisticated version of an extortion scam that has been around for years.

"I've been seeing this particular one, probably since about 2018. And the whole idea is they tell people we have these videos, of course, they don't show you a sample video. They never do because they don't have, your videos. ….but, this kind of thing, it's scary. People respond quickly and, pay it, but, they shouldn't. There's there's nothing behind it," he said.

Weisman said the details and language used in the letter, along with a QRcode to scan to make a payment – are the result of cyber criminals using artificial intelligence.

"The intention is 'we know where you live. We know all about you.' And all this is the unfortunate side effects of AI. Information, before, could be gathered online. But it took some effort. Now, it is easy to just harvest all kinds of information, including videos, including photographs, from the internet, using AI that then is used to tailor this to make it like it's much more specific to that person, which indeed makes it more frightening."

If you receive one of these emails, Weisman says you should ignore it.

"The last thing you want to do is to get into any kind of communication, with a scammer. …..you don't want to let them know that your email, is accurate. You don't want them to know that your cellphone is accurate. You don't want to be the low-hanging fruit. You get something like this, you purely, totally ignore it," he suggested.

Weisman said this is also a good reminder to protect your webcam. Put a Post-it note over your camera when you’re not using it, and make sure you change the default password on your webcam. He says the default password is out there for anyone to find and there have been incidents of them being hacked.

If you have a consumer problem, contact NBC10 Boston Responds by filling out our online consumer complaint form. We will get back to you!