SCSO warns of NSFW exploitation – Sheridan Media

Sheriff Levi Dominguez and Deputy Sheriff Boot Hill appeared on Sheridan Media’s Public Pulse program to warn the public about a scam going around the community.

This new scam involves attackers breaking into personal social media and messaging accounts and gaining access to messages. Sometimes these messages are very personal and private, with sexual content. This is exactly the type of message that attackers want to steal. Once they have access to these messages and photos, they contact the victim and abuse them for money to release the accounts and photos back to the individual.

Sheriff L. Dominguez

Bad guys taking advantage of these exploits is nothing new to the SCSO. The sheriff suggested using complicated passwords and changing them frequently. The sheriff had one recommendation for the public to help prevent these types of incidents from becoming an option for these criminals.

Sheriff L. Dominguez

Deputy Hill reminded the public that these criminals are creating scams and spending countless hours trying to break into accounts, trying to use different passwords to gain access to important information and messages.

Steven Schreffler, Interactive Media Manager at Sheridan Media, shared what you should and shouldn’t do when it comes to creating passwords and keeping your accounts secure.

Doing:

Use a simple sentence (for example: “MyDogRuns@5AM”).

Swap letters with numbers or symbols (for example: “Password” becomes “W@ssw0rd”).

Combine two unrelated words (for example, “TigerBanana2024”).

Don’t:

Don’t use common words or sequences such as “password” or “123456.”

Do not use personal information such as names or dates of birth in passwords.