It's rather easy to sift a fake email, from one that is not. But how impossible would it be to ignore the spam, if its subject line had your password flashing on it? On July 28, media professional Preeti Tandon (name changed), faced a similar conundrum, and therefore, chose to open the mail she received from "Abel Grabbe".

The sender claimed to have installed a malware on one of the adult websites she had visited, and in turn copied all her contacts on Facebook and Gmail, as well as the "inappropriate things" she had engaged in on her web camera. In return, Grabbe demanded she pay him $3,250 (Rs 2.28 lakh) as privacy fee. "Else, he threatened to share these details with my family and friends," Bengaluru-based Tandon said. "But, I hadn't visited any porn site, or used my web camera. The only thing that made this mail seem believable was that this person had my password." Tandon later learnt that she had been the target of a sextortion scam email.