Learnt a HUGE lesson!!

Yes this has happened to me. The fraudsters capitalize on that guilty feeling you already feel for watching porn, and use it to get some money. I've had friends who actually paid, and there computer was still frozen. Better to avoid this kind of thing all together. All kinds of pornography are equally shameful, if you think about it. There is no good pornography and bad pornography.

 

Nothing like a good scare to keep you on the straight and true path! ;-)

 

That happened to me once. I panicked at first and then realized that the police would just show up at your door if you did something wrong. I just disconnected the internet and reinstalled the operating system.

 

Those scams (the ones with the reoccurring popups) almost always take advantage of a security flaw in your browser software. You don't need to worry about them. They most likely don't have your personal information and they can most likely do zero damage to you personally (other than give you a headache trying to get the popups to go away). The popups get onto your browser through a website script that is normally embedded into one of those shady porn advertisement websites that popup every time you visit a porn site.

So... if you see that sort of thing again, blow it off. Most likely, the main porn site is probably actively trying to block advertisers who allow that kind of nefarious scripting.

I kept writing "most likely" because, it is possible for someone to either hack the website server and steal your personal info (if you have an account with them and a registered credit card) or, more likely, hack into your personal computer/phone. However, if they had hacked into your personal computer, the website server, or your phone, they would probably not use internet browser popups to inform you of their plot to extort your money.

And finally, if they had indeed stolen enough information to expose your behavior to the rest of the world, there is very little the police can do to help you, since, most people running these types of scams have done enough to make finding them too difficult for your local municipality. Normally, these scams originate from other countries where that country's legal system doesn't have time to do anything about petty criminals. The problem with running a scam like that in the United States or the UK or other similar countries is that it is extremely difficult to access the cash you extorted from an individual without the government being able to trace the cash back to someone they can throw into prison. Running the scam scripts is easy, getting the cash is extremely difficult. But... in Nigeria, pulling off the scam is much easier (sorry to single out Nigeria, there are many other countries where this type of illicit behavior is running rampant).