(Radio Iowa) – Iowans are being warned about online criminals who are threatening to expose people’s alleged shady internet habits. Lisa Schiller, at the Better Business Bureau, says they’re tracking a type of “sextortion” blackmail scam where con artists will claim they have evidence of you watching porn. “They’ll say they gained access to all of the websites that you visited,” she says, “and then they threaten to send embarrassing images or videos to your contacts, your family, friends, coworkers, if, of course, payment is not made.”

Image from FBI.gov

Schiller says these scams can be effective because no one wants to talk about this, much less if they’ve fallen for it. She says the crooks want to spook people into sending money immediately. “Scammers will contact somebody, anybody, whether or not they visited a pornographic site or sent any explicit photos anywhere,” she says, “and they’ll claim that they hacked your computer, they activated your webcam and recorded you.”

Schiller says this tracks along with other scams like the I-R-S or warrant scams, where callers try to scare you into immediate action. If you get one of these calls, she says to simply hang up.