Have you received an email claiming that your partner is cheating on you and that we can provide you with proof? This is the new infidelity scam that does not want the best for your relationship…
Ah, love! Romantic relationships are a very complicated thing, requiring a great deal of trust between partners. But this trust is sometimes fragile, and anything can break it. All it takes is a clumsy word, a suspicious text message or a deleted history for doubt to set in. And scammers have understood this well!
Also, as Bitdefender, a computer security specialist, points out in a recent alert bulletin, you may receive an email warning you that your spouse is cheating on you, claiming to have “proof” of his or her infidelity. The sender is quite willing to give it to you… for a fee, of course. Enough to arouse a certain interest, especially since the email includes not only your name, but also that of your partner!
The message takes the following form: “Good morning [nom de la cible]. [Nom du partenaire] is cheating on you. Here is some evidence. As a company specializing in cybersecurity, we have found information regarding [nom du partenaire] that might interest you. We have made a full backup of his disk. (We have everything: his address book, his social networks, his browsing history on sites, dating apps, all the files, phone numbers and addresses of all his contacts) and we are ready to give you full access to this data. For more details, visit our site.”
When you click on the link, you are redirected to a newly created website that prompts you to sign up for an account, which allows the scammers to collect valuable personal information, after which you must click a button to generate the report on your spouse. You are then taken to another page that provides an overview of the type of data the service has collected on your partner.
These include backups of his social media activity, his phone, WhatsApp, and more. The “report” can be purchased, via a bitcoin payment (around $2,500), by scanning a QR code on the screen and will allow you to view the “proof” via a Dropbox link. Of course, the latter does not exist.
In truth, cybercriminals have probably obtained your name and surname as well as those of your partner on social networks, through phishing or by cross-referencing information from stolen databases. For the moment, this scam is still fresh and not very widespread, but, as they say, prevention is better than cure!
If you are ever the target of such a scam, do not respond. Instead, forward the message to Signal Spam, Pharos, or directly to 33 700, the platform specializing in reporting scams. You can also report these fraudulent messages to the site internet-signalement.gouv.fr. Then block the sender so as not to be bothered any more and delete the message in question.