Is it even real or tapping into browser guilt? For instance, the FBI has bigger fish to fry than someone who watches adult content or illegally downloaded the new Kanye album. Admittedly not the greatest ‘carrot’ ever. This is a combination of carrot and stick the stick is the potential embarrassment and the tempting carrot is the idea that if you pay a small ransom fee, the threat will disappear. Ransomware on the other hand, is a cruder, faster business that mixes modern communication with an old fashioned psychological con game – extorting money based on threats that may or may not be real. Malware is a long game, lurking on your computer and accumulating valuable financial information.

These scammers often don’t have access to browser history or computer files, but (much like those infamous Nigerian Prince emails), it doesn’t matter as it’s inexpensive to attack many targets simultaneously. And has every single site you’ve clicked on (intentionally or accidentally) been 100% legal? This sense of guilt could be for behaviour real or imagined: even if your online behaviour is squeaky clean, you might misremember or imagine something illegal you’ve done or said in your lifetime of browsing. Maybe it’ll mention the very common (and very illegal) practice of downloading contraband movies, music or TV shows. Or it might suggest that certain compromising files (such as private photos or emails) will be distributed unless a ransom is paid. However, a new subset of ransomware attack preys on the victim’s sense of guilt hazarding a guess that they visited a site that might, for instance, be linked to pornography (or even child pornography). This threatened action could be deletion of precious files (sentimental or work-related), hacking of financial accounts, legal action, or something else. Ransomware pops up on your computer, freezes your PC (or pretends to), and threatens further action unless you pay a specified fine. Where once you received emails from fictional deposed princes, now you get pop-up ads that tell you that you’re being watched. Most of us have searches in our browser history we’d rather no one know about – and this is exactly what hackers are targeting through a volatile combination of ransomware and browser guilt. Which is exactly where browser guilt comes in. We’re all a lot savvier about online tracking too – but that doesn’t mean we’re any smarter about the things we search for. Once upon a time, the internet was seen as an anonymous, faceless utopia where you could say what you want, download what you want and browse where you want.īut in the past few years, we’ve been made aware of IP addresses, browsing histories and cookies (the internet tracking kind, not the delicious kind).

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