A few week ago three emails showed up in my yahoo.com account, all forwarded by the Yahoo messaging service. Each one contained the same message: you have 48 hours to pay us two bitcoins (the equivalent of $450 cdn), or we expose all your cheating ways to your family and friends.
The email said, “We know where you live, we know where you hang out, and we know what you did and how to expose you on your social media.”
I tossed the emails into the junk folder, but not before I forwarded the emails to the abuse department of Yahoo, and thanked them for forwarding the blackmails to me. It took me awhile to take in what had just happened to me, because it is not everyday I get blackmailed for cash. Let’s take a step back and see where this started.
I had purchased property and moved to the interior region of BC a couple of years back, and found myself with 1000 kilometers of wild bear and cougar country as my backyard. Winters can get mighty lonely out there, and being a middle age guy in hell’s half-acre was doing nothing for my love life. The only local choices of meeting people were to join a church, or become a barfly, so I decided to look around and see what else could be found.
Wireless internet brought the world into my home, and even though I wasn’t looking for a mail order bride or Miss right, I was looking for Miss Right now. I joined Plenty of Fish and OKCupid, but found out that there just were not any woman located within 100 kilometers of my location. Hardly what one would call dating territory. I was searching for anything that would connect me with potential partners, because really, the rules of dating in this modern-day is difficult to define.
No one mentions it anymore, but there were singles being advertised as available on Ashley Madison, so I didn’t take it as a cheaters only website. Ashley Madison was being touted as the “go to” dating site for singles, and married cheaters. So, after a year passed, I reached the stage of “beggars can’t be choosy”, I decided to fish in a new pond, to coin a phrase.
In truth, I didn’t know what I would catch, but if you don’t set a line, you don’t catch a damn thing, so I set my line. After paying the $50 entrance fee I was good to go. I thoughtfully wrote my profile, and uploaded my best photos, then perused the ladies online. A location was generally made known, but the names were anonymous, for obvious reasons. As it happens, there were still no women to be found within 100 kilometers of my house, at least none that were admitting where they lived, and that was a huge disappointment.
Still, not long after joining I did receive a few messages from women with hot pictures saying how interested they were in me, asking if I didn’t mind travelling. Never once did I reply to my reply. In fact, I never got a reply from any message I sent, ever, ergo, no cheating happened either. The website did ask me to up my subscription, but I never saw the point. Now that I know Ashley Madison hired women to make false profiles and messages on their website to entice men, I am relieved I didn’t sink more money into that lost cause. (Ashley Madison Fake Profiles).
In any case, I never had an offer to cheat, never met anyone, and never cheated. So, when I received the Ashley Madison extortioners’ emails threatening to expose me – I was taken aback.
Pay up! or be exposed.
Well, I say fill your boots. Expose me. While you are at it, expose Ashley Madison and expose yourself.
The majority of the online dating websites are full of fake profiles, frauds, and extortionist – even if the website itself is running a legit service – if you call promising a bunch of lonely men they will meet women, charge them large amounts of cash just to send an email, and grossing approximately 95% profit – as legit.
I had to learn the hard way that these online dating sites are not what they claim to be; are not able to provide the product they are selling; and in the long run, not only is it a waste of money – now there is a risk of extortion – who knows what’s next.
BOOM!
Go ahead extortionist, and make my day, say it to my face, I dare you.
I’ll admit to your face I joined, will you dare accuse me to my face?
No? I didn’t think so.
Being shamed for being lonely?
Bite me, and here’s my middle finger in reply to your extortion.
Upon conclusion I say, happy hunting my friends. Just watch your back, and it’s not that a date might put a knife in it, more like it’s your pocket they want to pick. What’s more the pity is that with so many sad and lonely men, and women out there why can’t we find a way to connect without some pimp extorting us for every single attempt?
Yours truly, Bertram.
Bertram can be contacted here: Bertram J. Kirkpatrick on Tumbler
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