Users of Russian social network VKontakte, an equivalent of Facebook have been subjected to extortion by crypto scammers. Criminals use toughening of the legal responsibility for the publication of social media posts which are contrary to views of the Government. VK users, published controversial themed posts, receive a messages with a ransom demand of 150 BTC in exchange for silence.
According to Gazeta.ru, since 2012, criminal cases related to social media posting have been opened almost every day. To date, there are a lot of advice on how to protect your VK account from the attention of investigators. More and more users delete their posts and saved photos.
On August 13, Managing Director of the social network Andrei Rogozov announced the possibility of making the profile completely private, available only to friends.
‘Statistics show that over time the situation with the initiation of criminal cases for publications on the Internet is deteriorating. VKontakte users are increasingly becoming involved in such cases. Law enforcement agencies often do not take into account the context, do not distinguish the publication from repost, and the image with a dubious joke equates to really dangerous criminal offenses’ he told.
