Krebs on Security posted about new AdSense based extortion and ransom emails going out to Google AdSense publishers. Telling them if they do not pay $5,000 in bitcoins within 72-hours, they will send invalid traffic to the site, thus removing the AdSense earnings Google pays the publisher.

Here is the email Krebs on Security posted on its blog:

I don’t believe these types of emails are actually all that new but now it seems to be making some mainstream news. Of course, if you receive one of these, you should send it to Google. Of course, do not pay the ransom. This is what they said when they tried to speak to Google about this:

With link spam ransom, Google says you can ignore it. But there you have some tools to protect yourself?

In any event, I assume Google is hearing about these issues now in a much bigger way. Hopefully they are taking this seriously.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.