SCSO warns of NSFW exploitation

Sheridan County Sheriff Levi Dominguez and Deputy Boot Hill made an appearance on Sheridan Media’s Public Pulse to alert the public to a scam that has been making the rounds in the community. 

This new scam involves bad actors breaking into personal social media and messaging accounts and gaining access to messages. Sometimes these messages are very personal and private, containing sexual content. This is the very type of message the bad actors are looking to steal. Once they have access to these messages and photos, they contact the victim and exploit them for money to release the accounts and photos back to the individual. 

Sheriff L. Dominguez 

Bad actors using exploitation such as this is nothing new to the SCSO. The Sheriff suggested using complicated passwords and changing them regularly. The Sheriff had one recommendation for the public to help keep this type of incident from being an option for these criminals.

Sheriff L. Dominguez 

Deputy Hill reminded the public that these bad actors are devising scams and spending countless hours working to break into accounts, attempting various passwords to gain access to critical information and messages. 

Sheridan Media Interactive Media Manager Steven Schreffler shared a few does and don’ts to create passwords and help keep accounts safe. 

Do:

Use a simple sentence (e.g., “MyDogRuns@5AM”).

Swap letters with numbers or symbols (e.g., “Password” becomes “P@ssw0rd”).

Combine two unrelated words (e.g., “TigerBanana2024”).

Do Not:

Don’t use common words or sequences like “password” or “123456.”

Don’t use personal information like names or birth dates in passwords.