Is fake blackmail still illegal? Someone spoofed the headers on an email to a redirecting address I own today and it's laughably written, but raised a question for me. The message claims to have kompromat on me that absolutely does not exist. Clearly it is sent to a large number of email addresses in the hopes that it reaches someone gullible with a guilty conscience that decides to pay. Whether it works or not is questionable (with a sufficiently large email list, I imagine it would). But it makes me wonder about the legality of this kind of scam. If a person A threatens to blackmail person B with kompromat they don't actually have, but person B is gullible enough to believe it, is it still illegal blackmail? I will add, per advice in the comments, that I am in the United States. I will further add, per advice in the comments, that I am in Florida. Since this is, of course, virtually untraceable and not worth the effort to prosecute anyway, I should say I am asking this question purely out of intellectual curiosity. Hello, As you may have noticed, I sent this email from your email account (if you didn't see, check the from email id). In other words, I have fullccess to your email account. I infected you with a malware a few months back when you visited an adult site, and since then, I have been observing your actions. The malware gave me full access and control over your system, meaning, I can see everything on your screen, turn on your camera or microphon and you won't even notice about it. I also have access to all your contacts. Why your antivirus did not detect malware? It's simple. My malware updates its signature every 10 minutes, and there is nothing your antivirus can do about it. I made a video showing both you (through your webcam) and the video you were watching (on the screen) while satisfying yourself. With one click, I can send this video to all your contacts (email, social network, and messengers you use). You can prevent me from doing this. To stop me, transfer $950 to my bitcoin address. If you do not know how to do this, Google - "Buy Bitcoin". My bitcoin address (BTC Wallet) is 1LfiwESci8U5iRNn2XwfrcjtVn5CLNZ7LQ After receiving the payment, I will delete the video, and you will never hear from me again. You have 48 hours to pay. Since I already have access to your system I now know that you have read this email, so your countdown has begun. Filing a complaint will not do any good because this email cannot be tracked. I have not made any mistakes. If I find that you have shared this message with someone else, I will immediately send the video to all of your contacts. Take care
According to Blackmail Overview :: Justia (emphasis mine): A blackmailer typically has information that is damaging to the victim, and uses threats to reveal that information in order to coerce the victim. Blackmail is considered a crime regardless of whether the information is true or false. The central element of the crime is the blackmailer’s intent to obtain money, property, or services from the victim with threats of revealing the information. So it's still a crime, at least in the US. But the enforcement problems are tracing the original emailer, which, due to (I assume) multiple email relay IPs, address spoofing, etc, and the big issue of identifying the actual individual who pressed the metaphorical "send" key on the bulk email script, the jurisdiction of that person, etc. As Ron pointed out, BitcoinWhosWho shows no one has fallen for it, even though millions of these emails get sent every day, gauging from the number that I get myself.
A contract can’t legalise illegality Let’s assume that absent the “simulation” disclosure in the ToS, this would be fraud. The question then becomes, does making the disclosure make it not fraud? Fraud requires dishonesty and deception. These are measured by what a reasonable person would determine from the overall conduct so a small piece of truth in amongst a web of half-truths and outright lies is still dishonest and deceptive. From the perspective of US law, is Bob doing this regarded a scam? No, but only because “scam” isn’t a legal term - it’s slang for fraud and this is fraud Is this a criminal case, or a civil case? Both What evidence can Tom provide to support the lawsuit? Whatever he has. However, in practice, these types of fraudsters are rarely ever caught and it’s even more rare for the victim to recover their money. They are usually off-shore in countries with either poor rule of law or which will not extradite their nationals.
You would need a court order to force them to take it down. There is virtually no chance a court will order them to take it down, because it would be almost impossible to do so without violating the First Amendment. You would have to prove that forcing a publisher to stop saying that you teach at the university would advance some compelling governmental interest, and that there isn't a better way to advance that interest. It's not clear what you mean by "cyberstalking," but if you're talking about someone sending you harassing messages, then the court would probably conclude that the better option would be to punish the harasser, rather than limit the publisher's speech. You could try paying them off or sending a threatening legal demand, but I doubt either would go far. I suspect that the best course would be a persistent campaign to escalate up their chain of command to find a sympathetic person willing to help. Even that, though, I would expect to be tough, because I'm sure you wouldn't be the first person trying this.
Counter notices are described in 17 USC 512(g)(3). It starts with the requirement for "A physical or electronic signature of the subscriber" (and a statement under penalty of perjury...). Supposing that you can't get anywhere with finding the contributor even via a subpoena, then you're stopped there: you can't swear on behalf of someone else. Paragraph (f) also says that if a person files a false infringement claim, they become liable for any damages, including costs and attorneys' fees, incurred by the alleged infringer, by any copyright owner or copyright owner's authorized licensee, or by a service provider, who is injured by such misrepresentation, as the result of the service provider relying upon such misrepresentation in removing or disabling access to the material or activity claimed to be infringing, or in replacing the removed material or ceasing to disable access to it but it's not immediately obvious that you would suffer damage by taking the material down (not immediately obvious doesn't mean obviously not true). A case could be made, but it's risky. In Online Policy Group v. Diebold, Diebold was hit with substantial damages basically for having made up a theory that certain email discussion was infringing when it was clearly fair use. If a person actually lies about being the copyright owner, that would probably be viewed even more dimly by the courts. Your 4th argument gives you no traction: if an infringer posts infringing material and transfers copyright on the web page, but they don't hold copyright, then that transfer mean nothing. As for the other arguments, your attorney will have to suggest an advisable course of action. S/he might advise that your evidence is so strong that you should just ignore the takedown; or that you should take the content down and then sue for damages; or take the content down and lobby your congressman for a change in the law. [Addendum] I will reiterate my recommendation to get a lawyer. I believe that under the law, the risk to you would be the situation where the person prevails in an infringement suit against you. Outside of the "mere conduit" safe harbor, you have to participate in the notice and takedown scheme in order to "stay safe" (also you have to do so quickly). You have identified a potentially huge flaw in the system. Theoretically, criminal charges of perjury and paragraph (f) damages would be enough to deter ordinary wrong-doers, provided that you can really prove that someone else is the copyright holder. But the cost of litigation is not zero and the chances of winning are not 100%. The law does assume that all parties tell the truth, indeed the law requires a "penalty of perjury" statement. Since counter-notice is also part of the legal dance, I would conclude that you do have to write yourself a counter-notice. Then if there is a suit, you have satisfied the requirements of the law.
You've identified exactly the right question: whether the person's subjective expectation of privacy, when viewed objectively, is the "justifiable under the circumstances". (Smith v. Maryland) The Supreme Court hasn't addressed how this test applies to ISPs and website requests. However, this question has been addressed by several circuit courts of appeal. I'll build a list of example cases. Many find that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in this information, but there are some cases that go the other way, and there is some nuance regarding exactly what information is being given away. US v. Beckett (11th Cir. 2010): the information consisted of the identifying information transmitted during internet usage and phone calls that is necessary for the ISPs and phone companies to perform their services. It is unreasonable for Beckett to have been unaware that such information was being transmitted to the ISPs and phone companies and so he “assumed the risk that the company would reveal to police the [information].” United States v. Forrester, 512 F.3d 500, 510 (9th Cir. 2007): Analogously, e-mail and Internet users have no expectation of privacy in the to/from addresses of their messages or the IP addresses of the websites they visit because they should know that this information is provided to and used by Internet service providers for the specific purpose of directing the routing of information. Like telephone numbers, which provide instructions to the "switching equipment that processed those numbers," e-mail to/from addresses and IP addresses are not merely passively conveyed through third party equipment, but rather are voluntarily turned over in order to direct the third party's servers. Regarding your secondary question about a "secret machine" that the government develops to get access to contents of an envelope without opening it, that is very similar to the situation in Kyllo v US 533 U.S. 27 (2001) (internal quotations removed): [...] obtaining by sense-enhancing technology any information regarding the home's interior that could not otherwise have been obtained without physical intrusion into a constitutionally protected area constitutes a search-at least where (as here) the technology in question is not in general public use. [...] Reversing that approach would leave the homeowner at the mercy of advancing technology-including imaging technology that could discern all human activity in the home.
Any answer is somewhat speculative, because there are no significant legal precedents. That said, you are probably not in breach of counterfeiting laws, as they typically protect physical currencies. However, due to the way that laws are written, their scope may be somewhat fuzzy in areas that were not foreseen, so you may find that a law unintentionally does cover your act. However, even if the act would fall under the law as written, jurisdiction remains an issue. Where would this counterfeiting happen, legally? Again, as this was not foreseen by lawmakers, it's possible that you may fall under foreign jurisdictions, e.g. because you spend the fake BitCoin and the the recipient lives in a country that assumes jurisdiction because their citizen was defrauded.
No, it is not illegal. The company has no standing to punish you for that. Companies can't sue random people for sending random email... that was largely settled under the (YOU)-CAN-SPAM Act, when in the guise of standardizing US anti-spam laws, spam was largely legalized and state laws were pre-empted and barred from existing. However, all the other laws still apply Laws on harassment, for instance. Sometimes people with mental illness think another human &quot;owes them&quot; a relationship (which kind of misses the point of what a relationship is, but never mind that). And those people, who sadly are an all-too-common cliché, tend to act badly in very predictable ways. As such, we have plenty of laws on the books (and plenty of family court judges who have seen it all) to dispense consequences to the misbehavior and protection to the victim. All those laws really don't care in which medium one might violate them: sky-writing, naval light signal, email, whatever.
I will try to answer some of my questions based on recent developments and other information I've seen. Yes. 2. No. On page 23 of this Commerce Dept. memo on TikTok, it describes: This prohibition would remove the TikTok app from U.S.-based mobile app stores, preventing mobile users from being able to download the app to their devices or receive updates. As scoped, this prohibition would only apply to app stores accessible in the United States, thus users would still be able to download the app while outside the United States. On page 15 of this Commerce Dept. memo on WeChat, it describes: This prohibition would remove the WeChat app from U.S.-based mobile app stores, preventing mobile users from being able to download the app to their devices or receive updates. As scoped, this prohibition would only apply to app stores accessible in the United States, thus users would still be able to download the app while outside the United States. 3,4,5. No for WeChat. In letters sent to the opposite party in a lawsuit and filed with the court, the US government has provided assurances that WeChat users will not have any civil or criminal liability for downloading or using the app for personal or business communication. we can provide assurances that the Secretary does not intend to take actions that would target persons or groups whose only connection with WeChat is their use or downloading of the app to convey personal or business information between users, or otherwise define the relevant transactions in such a way that would impose criminal or civil liability on such users. In other words, while use of the app for such communications could be directly or indirectly impaired through measures targeted at other transactions, use and downloading of the app for this limited purpose will not be a defined transaction, and such users will not be targeted or subject to penalties. I'm not entirely sure for TikTok, but the same may be true for TikTok since the prohibited transactions for both are essentially the same. No. The regulations on prohibited transactions do not require the blocking of traffic from the apps. Simply carrying the traffic of the app is not one of the prohibited transactions, as long as the company does not have a contract for internet transit or peering with ByteDance/Tencent, nor are providing hosting or content delivery services to ByteDance/Tencent. On page 23 of the Commerce Dept. memo on TikTok linked above, it says: User data could still be served by data centers, [redacted] operating outside of the United States. On page 7 of this declaration by a Commerce Dept. official further explains that WeChat traffic will still flow through the US: Moreover, this prohibition would not affect Internet transit or peering services in the United States that are not “directly contracted or arranged” by Tencent, and thus would leave the overwhelming majority of Internet traffic, including WeChat data, untouched.