Hotmail used to launch extortion scam

Hotmail user logged into their account this week to find that scammers had deleted all their e-mails except for one, which was from a hacker demanding cash in exchange for restoring the lost information, according to Websense.

Websense said this scam is a variant of ransomware, which is a malicious program that encrypts documents on the victim's computer and asks for a payment in order to decrypt the files. Had this been the owner or an employee of a small business, the company's intellectual property (IP) would have been at risk.

Source: ZD Net