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Comment by lifestyleguru | Hacker News Reader

Sometime around 2010-2020 there were tons of spam messages arriving to gmail of type "I know and have recordings of what you were doing there you immoral filthy pervert!". Nowadays they only want to give away million dollars.

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Apparently most of these huge spam waves originate from just one or two people which is why they're so similar. If a certain type of spam stops arriving it means that specific person got bored.

It's incredible how effective those messages are for some people. Some victims emptied their bank accounts because they were so ashamed of whatever porn they were watching and possibly afraid of legal consequences too. The amount of accounts on X that purportedly sell CSAM though telegram channels seems like an incredible opportunity for scammers beyond just normal fraud. Steal the money from the buyer first and then turn around and blackmail them for more.

I read it as regular spam message with slight laugh and without any anxiety, but if that was linked with or in response to some real payment or subscription then it would not be funny.

lol I actually got a spam email the other day saying more or less exactly this!

so weird that it somehow got through the spam filter

Gmail's spam filter has gotten noticeably worse in the last two months. I'm half-convinced they threw away whatever they used to be doing and just put Gemini in the loop.

Okay, we all know now what you are doing there.

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